


All the Useless Things -- Wilgefortis, year 4

by tin_girl



Series: All The Useless Things [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Dark Academia, F/F, F/M, M/M, Shenanigans, a criminal amount of pining, actually part 4 has good things happen in it too, but it's mostly bad things, here's the one where it all goes downhill, oh boy am i nervous or am i nervous, stupid initiation bs continues, very over-the-top shakespeare-based foreshadowing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-17 04:14:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 35,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28718673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tin_girl/pseuds/tin_girl
Summary: Aubrey Allen is a shipwreck waiting to happen.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character, Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Series: All The Useless Things [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1790320
Comments: 101
Kudos: 26





	1. love manual, september 1998 -- august 2001

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! I'm sorry, I know this took me ages but uni officially killed me, please leave forget-me-notes on my grave. 
> 
> First of all, check out this [absolutely gorgeous art](https://imgur.com/a/Hs2zL6s) by holographic (I swear, this killed me with how lovely it is :') <3). I'll link it above the appropriate part 3 chapter later but I didn't want you guys to miss it! 
> 
> Also, some of my comments uploaded incomplete in December and I haven't gone through my inbox yet to check all of them, so if I seemed weirdly abrupt, I'M SORRY, ITS THE COMPUTER :'''''') 
> 
> Anyway, part four is here and this means...........
> 
>  **content warnings for part 4 AND 5, please read**
> 
> I'm including everything I can think of here because I don't want to spoil the story but please, please, if you want details about any of these do message me on tumblr or twitter (@yoyointhegarden) or email me (ihidmyyoyointhegarden@gmail.com). Anyway, in no particular order: 
> 
> severe bullying (emotional & psychological manipulation + physical violence -- people get hit, even badly beaten up, though it won't be /super/ explicit) 
> 
> very very very unhealthy coping mechanisms
> 
> super co-dependent relationships
> 
> character death 
> 
> underage smoking & drinking (to the point of throwing up and making questionable life choices) 
> 
> self-harm (not necessarily of the conscious and typical sort) 
> 
> and sexual assault -- so, this one is tricky because the assault part checks out, but I'm not sure about the 'sexual.' I know, this sounds horrible, but this will be mentioned rather than described explicitly and I've been battling with myself a lot about this but.............. this story /was/ inspired by a real boarding school... not event, more a tradition, so I'm keeping it. Please don't hesitate to message me about this. 
> 
> Wow this all sure sounds like this story will turn into torture porn, but I promise, there'll be good moments. I'm definitely more interested in getting to writing about the healing than I am in describing awful things in detail! 
> 
> *
> 
> Now, as for this chapter, it's from Lavinia's pov since she's actually super important in part 4. So, sorry, no Aubrey yet but! it does have that Lavinia & Easy conversation you might be interested in :))
> 
> (Oh, and do check out the painting for this since a character is specifically compared to the lady in it -- [here's a link](https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/393994667398862006/))

Ciuca Elena Cerasela, _St. Theodora of Sihla_

*

Finally, I plead guilty

Of adoring you

~Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, _My Divine Lysis_

*

1.

When Lavinia first sees Regina Stranger, she decides that Regina looks like a still drying stain, all unclear edges but there. Lavinia’s thirteen, and stupid, and hot-headed, and so she makes certain assumptions about Regina in alphabetical order the moment she lays eyes on her: awkward, boring, clumsy, poor, slow. _Wrong_. Her first week at Wilgefortis, she learns that Regina is not poor, but it doesn’t occur to her to reconsider any of the other epithets, and so when a paper with Regina’s name on it lands in front of her in class, she deliberates between ‘slow’ and ‘wrong’ for Regina’s adjective.

In the end, because it’s supposed to be something positive, she puts ‘quiet’ there. It _is_ a good thing because the last thing Lavinia needs is for someone like Regina to be _loud_.

*

There is a boy who likes Lavinia from the start, a Hugo, or a Hugh, or a Humphrey. He has knobby knees and big ears. His smile is even bigger.

“ _Master and Margarita_ ,” he says one day, nodding at her book. “It’s the one about the devils in Moscow?”

 _No,_ Lavinia thinks but knows better than to say out loud. _It’s about love, and hope_ , she thinks, even though it isn’t.

Here’s what Lavinia knows about love: every year, there’s a Christmas tree in their living room, one that almost reaches the ceiling. It glitters, the baubles red and gold, and there’s a star on top that Lavinia couldn’t reach if she tried. She can’t remember it ever not being there but she can’t remember ever seeing someone putting it there either.

Here’s what Lavinia knows about hope: her father only gets his hands greasy when it’s his own car. The ones he sells, he couldn’t care less about, but the ones he drives, that’s another story. That’s how Lavinia likes him best: humming something from the 60s, his sleeves rolled up, black under his nails. Their garage suits him, or maybe he suits the garage: either way, whenever he goes there, Lavinia follows, and, sometimes, he’ll ask her to hand him this or that, which is important, so important that, by now, she’s learned the names of all those this and thats.

(My girl, he said once, and she had no idea if he’d meant her or the car.)

“I’m not interested,” Lavinia tells the boy, and maybe she’s heartless, but is she _really_? At least this way he’ll know, at least he’ll learn— “Don’t worry, it’s not the ears. It’s everything else.”

“I get it,” the boy says, bringing his hands up defensively. “Are you one of them?”

Lavinia hears it as if through water.

“Them?” she repeats, though she already knows. She already knows what she doesn’t yet know because he must mean—

“One of them heiresses engaged to lords they’ve never met at the age of twelve,” the boy says with a grin. Lavinia, heart in throat, manages to grin back.

“Sure, whatever helps you get over it.”

What she doesn’t know just yet is this: that’s not how one gets over ‘it’ because there _is_ no ‘how’ to it at all.

*

Lavinia’s first conversation with Regina Stranger goes like this:

Lavinia is sitting at a library table on a Saturday morning, tea at her elbow, a stack of books in front of her, when Regina appears in front of her, too quiet for footsteps to betray her approach. It’s late September, and, outside, everything is still green: this feels significant, somehow.

It must be the morning light but, suddenly, Regina doesn’t look like a stain at all. Instead, she looks like an icon of Lavinia’s mother’s favourite saint. Lavinia’s mother grew up in Romania and came here praying to St. Theodora of Sihla on the ferry, even though St. Theodora of Sihla – a hermit who lived in a mountain cottage, alone and forgotten – had little to do with crossing oceans.

 _Why would you like someone like her?_ , Lavinia asked her mother when she was six. _She had no clothes and no food, and how come she didn’t die from the no-food?_

 _Birds would feed her_ , her mother explained.

Lavinia _hates_ saints. They always seem to stare regardless of where one stands in relation to the icons, and Lavinia, well, she hates the staring, too. It always feels like she’s put herself on inside-out, her organs and sins there for all the world to see.

“Mind if I sit here?” Regina says, pointing to the empty chair opposite to Lavinia, even though there are at least four free tables around them.

“I do mind,” Lavinia snaps, and considers toppling the stack of her books so they’d spill all over the table, a ‘you’re not welcome here’ of a sort. “Someone’s already sitting there.”

“Oh? Who?”

Lavinia glares. “Me!”

Regina blinks at her slowly, and then smiles. “Surely, you don’t need two chairs all to yourself. You’re quite… skin and bones.”

“Maybe I have imaginary friends,” Lavinia says with a nasty grin that she’s been practicing in the mirror.

“You don’t seem like the type.”

“The type to have imaginary friends?”

“The type to have an imagination,” Regina says. Her eyes widen when she sees the expression Lavinia doesn’t quite manage to hide. “I don’t mean it as an _insult_.”

“You don’t?” Lavinia says, suspicious.

Regina shrugs. It’s an awkward gesture, one that doesn’t suit her. “I like dreamers fine, but the world would stop turning if some of us weren’t wide awake.”

Lavinia snorts. “How profound.”

“It wasn’t meant to be,” Regina says, tilting her head to the side. “I was just stating a fact.”

“Look,” Lavinia says, tapping the surface of the table with her fingers and wondering why everything itches: the kind of itch that scratching wouldn’t ease. “I’m busy here.”

“Sorry,” Regina says simply. “It wasn’t my intention to disturb you.”

Lavinia raises her eyebrows and spreads her arm to point at all the free tables surrounding them.

Regina smiles. “How many people can the dining room table at your house sit?” she asks, eyes sparkling. “Ours can sit twelve, but it pulls out, and then it’s sixteen. Most days, it’s just the three of us, though.”

Against herself, Lavinia thinks of that star atop their Christmas tree each year. She thinks of her mother, who ‘celebrates’ Christmas with them in December, and not in January.

(“It’s me who came here,” she explained when Lavinia asked once, irritated. “Stop it with the questions, would you? Can’t you see I’m busy now?”)

“I don’t like you,” Lavinia told Regina, matter-of-fact. “Go away.”

*

Lavinia is spoiled and she knows it: she remembers being five, eight, eleven, and sprawling on the floor in the middle of a sea of toys, all of them shiny, and expensive. A new doll every week, a new dollhouse every month, a kiss on the forehead every—

Every something.

She used to name her dolls after things: book titles, flowers, months. What she remembers most fondly, though, are not the tea parties she’d hold for them, but how her father would let her climb in his lap every now and then. There was an art to it, because he was too irritable for jumping on top of him, and so Lavinia learned to scale chairs like a monkey, wriggling under his arm in such a way that he wouldn’t need to adjust it for her to settle down with her head under his chin. She knew better than to ask what he was doing, so she’d look instead: it’s how she eventually learned to read, her father’s papers spread in front of them as she’d wait for her forehead kiss, the occasional car manual for guilty pleasure.

“It’s like you forget she’s there,” Lavinia’s mother would complain whenever she’d stumble on them like this, and Lavinia’s father would glance around, confused, before his eyes would land on the top of Lavinia’s head.

“I do forget,” he’d say fondly, adjusting his grip because, always, he _had_ been holding her.

*

Lavinia’s second conversation with Regina Stranger goes like this:

It’s early morning, hours till classes, mist over the ground outside, thick like cotton candy, and Lavinia can’t sleep. She’s tangled in her blanket in a cocoon of warmth, and she’s staring out the window, even though she’s not supposed to.

Lavinia might be spoiled but the first thing she thought when she threw her bag onto the bed by the window was, _I don’t deserve the view_. So, not spoiled enough not to realise it, but too spoiled to give it up for someone like Treasure Little, who’d surely find more time for admiring sunsets, but has to sleep in the corner instead, where the warmth from the heat radiator doesn’t reach and where there are always cobwebs.

Lavinia’s not supposed to stare out the window because it’s not for her. It’s a waste of time and time – sand always trickling through the neck of an hourglass somewhere – is money, is books read, is essays written, is being better than others, is meeting expectations before they grow too great to meet.

She’s not supposed to stare out the window because the view is for free, and so, worthless.

She stares anyway. God, how she stares, because what if the mist is like clouds and what if clouds are like feathers and what if feathers are like snow—

 _A visible mass of condensed watery vapour floating in the atmosphere, typically high above the general level of_ —

 _Oh, screw it_ , she thinks. Screw it, because she’s not some Mary Lennox secret-gardened into loving the outdoors and growing rosy-cheeked, but she might be secret-gardened anyway because, well, she’s read _The Secret Garden_ and – never let it be said she’s not self-aware in her hypocrisy – liked it, too.

Outside, the mist is not like feathers. It’s just wet. Lavinia tries catching it in her hands anyway and doesn’t grow irritated when it doesn’t work. It’s not like expensive dolls: the confidence that it’ll never work – could never work, even if she beat her fists against the ground like she used to do in supermarkets aged five – somehow makes trying all the sweeter.

 _You can wrestle wind, but the wind won’t wrestle you_ , Lavinia’s favourite nanny (and that says something, seeing as she had twelve of those) told her once, _so what you really end up doing is dancing._

She almost misses Regina because Regina— well, Regina almost looks like mist herself. Lavinia follows her through the fields at a slow pace and with her heart in her throat waiting for Regina to glance over her shoulder, like Orpheus and Eurydice, only without the love, and the dying, and the music, so not like Orpheus and Eurydice at all.

So the way their second conversation goes is that it _doesn’t_ , but Lavinia counts it anyway because it feels like talking, the way their footsteps synch, even if Regina has no idea.

Regina stops, and so Lavinia, a distance behind, stops too, like failed clockwork.

Not, not like clockwork, like—

Regina crouches over something and is still for quite a while. When she stands back up, she turns a little to the right before she resumes walking, quickening her pace. Curious, Lavinia follows, and almost steps in the half-eaten body of a dead bird. She crouches over it like Regina did, scowling at the maggots and wondering if it’s a sparrow.

She trails after Regina all the way to the small shed that hugs the school grounds wall and hides behind it as Regina rummages inside. When she leaves, she has a shovel in hand, and Lavinia’s first thought is: _no fucking way_.

Her second thought is simply: _oh_ _boy_.

She stumbles after Regina and then hides between trees to watch Regina dig a hole in the ground from afar. When she puts the bird inside, she doesn’t push him in with the side of the shovel, and she doesn’t use a handkerchief either. Instead, she cups her hands around the body, maggots and all.

After, she stands over the flattened ground in silence. She doesn’t fold her hands but it feels like she’s praying anyway.

 _Ridiculous_ , Lavinia thinks. _Stupid, naïve, idiotic._ _Moronic._

God, but she hates Regina. She _hates_ her. That’s why she’s crying as she hugs a tree trunk – because she hates her so.

*

It all goes right, which is to say, it all goes wrong. Lavinia mocks Regina for reading Sappho, spreads rumours about her, says cruel things. She sniffs herself when no one is looking because does she really smell like marzipan and why would Regina hate marzipan and—

She’s the bully, she’s the popular kid, she’s the rich heiress, and the last time someone touched her was when Regina grabbed her by the hand and told her she should wear mittens, only that’s not right, because Regina never did grab her by the hand, it was Lavinia’s sleeve instead.

Sometimes, when Lavinia does things, it’s like she’s watching herself from above, suspended in the air and powerless to do anything to stop herself. She’s a spoiled thing and always does just what she wants, except for when she doesn’t, except for when it’s the very opposite.

Here’s the thing: once upon a time, Lavinia’s father said, _let’s play pool_ , and Lavinia thought, _I can do that_ , and practiced until she beat him.

Once upon another time, Lavinia’s father said, _let’s play poker_ , and Lavinia thought, _I can’t do this, I’ll never win_ , and threw his cards in the fireplace.

She’d be bad at friendship, she knows that much.

She’d be bad at Regina, too, so here’s fuel to the fire.

*

She’d never admit it, not even under torture, but the day the girls she’s supposed to be friends with (a list of names folded into a neat square and snuck into her coat’s pocket by her mother in late August) tell her to jump in the lake is the best day she’s had since coming to Wilgefortis. If she’ll die from pneumonia, at least she’ll die—

Not happy, no. But something. She’ll die something.

She puts her fingers through the holes in Ezra Weiss’s coat and decides that she’ll buy him a new one because she doesn’t know how else to say thank you. When she and Regina play a half-hearted game of Scrabble later that evening, Lavinia forgets to comb out her wet hair for the first time in months and, as she stares at the letters strewn on the floor to arrange them into a word, she wishes time would hold its breath for her just for a little while.

Of course, spoiled though she is, in the end, she can’t have _that_.

*

Lavinia used to arrange her dolls on the windowsills of their house when she was small, a perfect, five-inch distance between each two. It didn’t occur to her that there was anything odd about it until she started visiting friends who were really the daughters of her mother’s friends and saw heaps of toys squished together like mice.

“What, your dolls don’t hug?” A girl called Merit asked her once when Lavinia scowled at one such pile.

“ _No_.”

“What do they do, then?”

“They sit there, stare at the wall, and look pretty!” Lavinia snapped, irritated. “They don’t do _anything_ , all right? They’re _dolls_.”

Once, Lavinia started trying on her mother’s make-up. Her parents were away at some social function – ‘a little bit of wine, a little bit of dancing, too much gossip’ her mother had said – and suddenly time was taffy, stretched however Lavinia wished it. It wasn’t about looking pretty, and it wasn’t even about the colours – it was about how her mother’s perfume smelled like her, more so than Lavinia’s mother smelled of the perfume. It was about how the lipstick looked the same on Lavinia’s mouth because she had her mother’s complexion. 

“Are you a clown now, then?” Lavinia’s father said when they got back early, unwinding a scarf. He had this way of knotting it that made it look like a cravat but left half his neck exposed to cold. “Hide before your mother sees you.”

But it was already too late: her mother’s heels tap-tap-tapped on the tiles and then she let out a scream.

“Do you have any idea how much these cost?” she snarled when she grabbed Lavinia by the wrist, fingers digging in. Her mother could never open a jar without help but, just then, Lavinia didn’t understand why. “ _Do_ you?”

 _But you have money_ , Lavinia thought helplessly, lips too sticky for her to dare say it. _You have rivers of money._

Later, Lavinia’s father helped her wash the make-up off, pushing her mother away when she started scrubbing at it too hard. The lipstick Lavinia used to paint circles on her cheeks, the eyeliner she used to draw hearts under her eyes, the rouge she put all over her eyelids – all gone down the drain.

“The thing is,” her father sighed, staring at her in the mirror, “we never should have had y— _kids_.”

Later, Lavinia fell asleep thinking of that treacherous plural, because she wasn’t fooled by it: for seven years, it’d been just her.

Three days later, his father smiled wide enough for his teeth to show and spilled tubes of lipstick over Lavinia’s bed like they were crayons, and she imagined him snapping his fingers at a shop assistant, _give me one of each colour, dear, and don’t bother wrapping them._

“Aren’t you happy?” he asked her, hands on hips.

“Very,” Lavinia lied.

What she thought was: _you don’t get it. You just don’t._

Rejection tasted foul and she would never ever taste it again, and she would taste it over and over again and—

*

When Regina gives her the scarf, Lavinia wants to—

Wants to—

Wants to…

Stop the train, yell at everyone to shut up, tear the world to confetti until something else is revealed, someplace where she could have more time, where time would wink at her and let her take enough breaths for her heart to stop doing whatever it’s doing, acrobatics, aerobics, somersaults, killing her, take your pick.

Lavinia doesn’t ever think about where things come from – she gets them ready like magic gifts, goods she’ll never run out of and will never have to wait for – but the woollen thing in Regina’s hands is all about context. It’s a thing but the verb that goes with it is not ‘to have,’ but ‘to make,’ ‘to gift,’ ‘to prick one’s fingers’ and ‘to think of someone’ and ‘to be kind’ and—

It’s not a forehead kiss, but, for some reason, that’s what it makes Lavinia think of.

 _It’s just two months_ , Treasure Little mumbled to herself earlier while packing her socks.

 _It’s longer_ , Lavinia thinks now, wrapping herself in the wool.

2.

The new school year, Lavinia decides, will not be about making people like her.

The new school year will be about shrugging and not caring if they hate her.

(With one exception, that is. But oh, how Lavinia hates exceptions.)

It’s ten minutes past curfew on a September evening when Lavinia risks breaking the rules for a hot cup of tea and finds Regina rummaging in the kitchen cupboards downstairs.

“What are you doing?” she asks, feeling so self-conscious about her _One Hundred and One Dalmatians_ bathrobe that it comes out sharper than she’d intended. Regina startles and turns to stare at her with this deer-in-the-headlights look, as though Lavinia has caught her trying to rob a bank. She’s had her hair braided and wrapped around her head like a crown the whole day, but now it looks more like a small bird’s nest, strands slipping free and hanging around her face like early spring twigs.

“I’m just—”

“Is that _blood_?”

Red-stained paper is wrapped clumsily around Regina’s hand and sticks to her skin. 

Regina smiles, wry. “I was looking for Jerusalem’s brooch. I found it.”

“And now you’re, what, making tea?” Lavinia asks, horrified.

“I’m looking for gauze,” Regina says mildly. “Why?”

“You’re looking for gauze _in the kitchen_?” Lavinia repeats, making sure to raise her eyebrows as high as physically possible. “Here’s an idea, how about you try the infirmary instead?”

Regina frowns, pressing the paper tighter around the wound. “I don’t want to make a fuss.”

She’s pale but stubbornness makes colour come back to her cheeks and Lavinia stares, defeated.

“All right, Christ, Mary, and Mary Magdalene, come _on_ ,” she says, marching out of the room and not waiting for Regina to follow.

“I told you, I don’t want to make—“ Regina starts, trailing behind her.

“I’m _not_ making a fuss,” Lavinia interrupts, hands curling into fists. “Be _quiet_.”

“ _Rude_.”

“Well, get used to it!”

Regina comes to an abrupt stop at that, and Lavinia whips around, irritated.

“What now?”

“I’m supposed to get used to it, hmm?” Regina says thoughtfully, tilting her head.

“Don’t then!” Lavinia snaps, throwing up her hands. “Now _move_.”

Once they’re back upstairs, Lavinia tells Regina to wait on the common room couch while she collects her first aid kit.

“My mother was a girl scout before she grew up and marrying rich went to her head,” she explains when Regina arches an eyebrow. “Hand.”

She says ‘hand’ the way her father says ‘wrench’ when working on a car, but when she grabs Regina by the wrist, it’s gentler.

Truth is, Lavinia is no good at gentle. When she was small, she kept tearing limbs off her dolls, no matter that she was dainty and doll-like herself, a tiny thing that could be mistaken for one if she held her breath. She doesn’t know how to take care of people, she’s not— well, she’s not _Regina_ , but maybe, just maybe, Regina won’t be able to tell since, Lavinia is pretty sure, _she_ doesn’t know what it’s like _being_ taken care of.

Lavinia drops the blood-sticky paper to the ground and drags her finger along the cut, watching as the skin there parts and red wells up. She doesn’t bother pretending to be disgusted and leaves Regina’s hand palm-up on her knee as she rummages for disinfectant.

(She doesn’t bother thinking about how she’s kneeling in front of Regina either.)

“This will hurt,” she warns.

“Oh, I know,” Regina says, amused.

“I’m serious,” Lavinia hisses. “Don’t yell and wake the first-years.”

“Do you really think something like this will make me yell?” Regina laughs, almost fond. Lavinia almost asks her, what have they done to you?, but she’s been watching Regina and she has the feeling that whatever they have done to her has more to do with what they _haven’t_ done to – _for_ – her.

When she washes the cut, Regina doesn’t even flinch.

“Does it hurt?”

“You said it would and now you’re asking?” Regina says cheerily. “It stings a little.”

How ridiculous, that Lavinia seems more bothered by the fact than Regina herself. She tries to hide it, but it’s already too late: she scowls at the wound and—

Oh, but she’s always scowling at things, isn’t she? She’s always scowling at things, and so Regina won’t know that it’s the pain, and not her, that she’s scowling at now.

“There,” she says once she’s done wrapping Regina’s hand, ribbon and all. She’s made sure to be methodical and not let her hands linger because why would they linger? “I’ll change it for you in the morning.”

“No, it’s fine, I—”

“The thing, Stranger, is that it doesn’t matter if you make a fuss or not. People who don’t want to help you won’t do it regardless.”

Regina blinks down at her, surprised, and why is Lavinia still kneeling? She tries to will herself to get up but— but.

“And you want to help me?” Regina says, incredulous. 

“I’m just as shocked as you are,” Lavinia sighs. She startles when she notices that she’s been tapping Regina’s knee with her nails and snatches her hand away. “How come someone who knits such beautiful things is so clumsy?”

Regina gapes at her and then smiles, a wide one, an oil-paint one.

“So you like the scarf,” she whispers, content, and it’s that she whispers instead of exclaiming it that just completely undoes Lavinia.

“Irrelevant,” she mumbles, feeling annihilated.

“I can be good at something and still be clumsy, you know,” Regina says, shaking her head with exasperation. “I wasn’t born knowing how to knit. It takes practice.”

“And talent,” Lavinia insists, noting with horror that her fingers are back at it, tap-dancing on Regina’s knee.

“No,” Regina argues. “Just practice.”

Lavinia blinks up at her and wonders if what Regina means is that everything can be taught. She wonders if she could still teach her heart how to open a parachute even though the stupid thing’s already jumped.

“Jesus,” she whines, hands trembling as she packs up the first-aid kit. “You’re something else.”

What she means by that is, of course, _you’re wonderful_ , and what she means by that is, of course, _I’m screwed._

*

She stops wearing the scarf in public because she can’t keep her hands off it, constantly trailing the edges of the leaf pattern or putting the wool to her nose even though, by now, it only smells of her. Instead, she wraps herself in it after lights-out, when it’s too dark for anyone to see.

*

“They’re all just so spoiled!” Lavinia’s mother complained once when they came back from some dinner or other, all in a huff. “I bet their mommies would come running whenever they cried in their cribs.”

Lavinia, eight years old and hidden behind the doorway, thought, _what would you do, then?_

*

The thing about whatever it is Regina’s doing with Jonathan Small – his lips on her cheek, his lips on her cheek, _his lips on her cheek_ – is that it hurts, and Lavinia can’t have it hurt, so instead of being heartbroken about it, she decides to be angry.

Kipp Birdwhistle, who knows too much even though he never asks, takes pity on her and tells her that she’s got it wrong without elaborating, but, weeks later, Regina kisses him on the mouth for all the world to see, so just because Lavinia’s got it wrong doesn’t mean that the truth’s any better.

Regina kisses him, and Lavinia stops mid-step, like failed clockwork.

No, not like clockwork. Like a heart.

*

“It’s really good, actually,” Beauchamp tells her when Lavinia asks him about her English essay after class. “You’ve improved a lot since last year. What have you been doing, Miss Pye?”

What Lavinia’s been doing is keeping Heartbreak (oh, yes, capital h Heartbreak, capital h Heart mutilation, capital h Heart death) under lock and key, and the only way to stop it from breaking out is crushing it under tons of schoolwork until she’s like a machine – efficient, unfeeling, and _fine_.

She smiles. “Nothing,” she says sweetly, and thinks of breaking Jonathan’s filthy fingers even though, by now, it’s clear that Regina’s already broken his heart ~~too~~.

3.

 _It’s for the best_ , she tells herself in September, still not over it. _You’re not_ like that _anyway._

 _It’s for the best,_ she tells herself over and over again, but she _is_ like that, and Regina and Kipp act like they’re just friends.

Over the summer, her mother would ask her if she said a morning prayer each breakfast, and, every day, Lavinia would lie and say yes. She hasn’t said a prayer since Regina – not since that sparrow she put in the ground because what’s Heaven good for if it’s not for birds – but she has written an unsent letter that could pass for one. She burnt it the very same evening because there’s danger in letters, but, for a while, it’d been there, ink on page, or was it blood?

“Cigarette?” Kipp Birdwhistle offers when she bumps into him one evening after rounding the school’s corner.

“I didn’t know you smoked.”

“I don’t,” Kipp says with a shrug. “I just carry them around with me to have something to offer people I’m supposed to be nice to.”

“You’re supposed to be nice to me?” Lavinia says, arching an eyebrow. “I’m not that important, just rich.”

Kipp barks out a laugh. “Never thought I’d hear you admit that.”

“Yeah, well,” Lavinia says with an awkward shrug. She lingers but she refuses to lean on the wall next to him. She’s still on a warpath, and it might have been Regina who kissed him, but it takes two to… It takes two. “Do you carry a lighter with you too?”

He winks. “Sure, but that one I need for myself.”

He wants her to ask, so she doesn’t. She doesn’t stay either.

*

Sometimes, Regina’s eyes seem to say, _come on, stop it already, talk to me, aren’t you tired of this? Won’t you please let it go? Won’t you please play Scrabble with me until we have a sentence?_

Most of the time, they’re just eyes.

*

When Lavinia was small, she used to pull on her mother’s skirt and ask her for tales about Romania, which, back then, sounded like a fairy-tale kingdom once upon a time rather than a real place. It’d be all ‘storybook towns, each house painted a different colour’ and ‘mountains like God parted the rocks with his hands, the Piatra Craiului ridge sharpened with the tip of his fingernail’. It changed with time and, before Lavinia knew it, the frown between her mother’s eyebrows would be deeper, the paint on those colourful houses from her stories would be peeling, and God’s signature mountains would be forgotten.

“Poverty,” her mother would say. “Poverty, and dirt, and I’m better off here,” like she was trying to convince someone, maybe herself.

“Will you drive me to Bura— Buta— _Bucha_ rest?” Lavinia asked her father once, after her mother grew so irritable that she had to switch to tugging on his shirts instead.

“Bucharest?” he repeated, without looking up from his phone. “Sorry, sweetie, I’m too busy.”

She only realised how funny it was that the obstacle was his lack of time rather than the ocean they’d somehow have to cross years later, looking back on the moment with a mixture of embarrassment and regret.

Sweetie, he said, but she wasn’t sweet, not even a little, not at all.

*

When she snatches Ezra Weiss’s sketchbook out of his hands and opens it on a random page, at first, she can’t believe what she’s seeing. She blinks to clear her eyes, but they’re still there: a dozen drawings of Aubrey Allen’s face.

Sometimes, she still looks in the mirror, and thinks, _I’m not like that._

Now, she looks at Ezra Weiss and thinks, _you’re like me_. She remembers what Regina told her about practice and decides that she’ll learn it all – friendship, care, kindness – there and then.

She drags him away, far from curious glances, sits him on her bed, and wraps him in a blanket.

“Would you stop it,” he hisses when she pats down his curls. She starts leafing through the sketchbook and he _lets_ her.

“That’s a lot of Aubreys,” she says once she’s done.

Ezra nods with a defeated sigh. “Three pencils’ worth of Aubreys, to be exact. This is my fourth sketchbook.”

“You’re in love with him,” Lavinia says, because there’s no point beating around the bush.

“No, I’m not,” Ezra tries, but it’s a half-hearted effort. 

“You _are_.”

A short pause, and then:

“Fine,” he sighs. “I might be. Am. Whatever. Laugh yourself hoarse and get on with ruining my life, why don’t you.”

“You don’t sound too upset,” Lavinia points out, surprised.

Ezra smiles, wry. “This place, it’s… I don’t belong here, do I?” He shrugs, adjusting the blanket around himself. “It had to end sooner or later.”

“Is this sooner?” she asks, curious.

“It feels like sooner, but it’s later,” he says, eyes wet but not filled with tears just yet. “I had three years, didn’t I?”

Lavinia likes Aubrey Allen. He’s a shy mess but when you pour two cups of tea down his throat and make him forget that other people exist, he talks about things like there isn’t a subject he hasn’t written a dissertation on, and his eyes are Kipp-Birdwhistle-clever whenever he’s had enough sleep, but they’re not Kipp-Birdwhistle-nosy. She’d probably bully him back in first year if it hadn’t been for that time he took _The Princess Bride_ off the shelf for her, but, in the end, she’s glad they didn’t have to go through that.

So, Lavinia likes Aubrey Allen. She can’t imagine _loving_ him. He’s similar to Regina in some ways, snapped-at so often that he’s learned quiet and mastered it, too, but where Regina has made herself a home out of the neglect, ~~where Lavinia herself screamed her way out of it~~ , Aubrey Allen is a shipwreck waiting to happen.

Lavinia searches the sketchbook for the single drawing of Regina and taps it with her knuckle. “I’m not going to ruin your life just yet.”

Ezra frowns at the drawing, and then his eyes grow wide. “ _That’s_ why you haven’t been talking to her?”

Here’s the truth of it: the only reason why Lavinia is still mad at Regina is that she has no right to be. it’d be so much easier to forgive her if what Regina did was hers to forgive.

“I’m going to keep you,” Lavinia decides, tugging at the blanket until Ezra is forced to share it.

“What if I don’t want to be kept?” he grumbles into her hair when she wraps her arms around him, unused to hugs and careful not to squeeze too hard.

“You’re a stray, stupid,” she whispers in his ear. “I’m never letting you go.”

*

The letter went something like this:

_Dear To Hell With You,_

_I hated you at first sight, because if I didn’t hate you, it’d be something else. I hated you so I wouldn’t not-hate you. I hated you so I wouldn’t love you. And then I – stupid, stupid, stupid!—loved you anyway. You with your bird funerals and not making a fuss and spending hours knitting things for people you should hate. _

_How could you make me feel this?_

_Sincerely,_

_Lavinia Pye_

It was the first such letter she wrote, but it wouldn’t be the last.

It was the only one she’d burn.

*

“I’ll get over it,” Ezra mumbles when she kisses his forehead goodbye on the last day of school. Lavinia takes pity on him and waits until he’s out of earshot before she says it:

“No, you won’t.”

4.

“Teach me how to drive,” she says, crossing her arms. No please, because she’s learned that when one says please, people tend to say no.

“I’m busy, sweetie,” her father says without looking up from her phone.

“Either you teach me, or I teach myself,” Lavinia says with a shrug. “It’s your car.”

A beat, two, and then he looks up. “You really think it’s the car I’d be worried about?”

Lavinia arches an eyebrow.

“Oh fine,” he sighs, putting the phone away. “I can finish this later. Why now, though? Is there somewhere you want to go?”

She wonders if she’d get away with saying ‘Bucharest’, but settles on ‘everywhere.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes, i really love Master and Margarita. I also really love Romania. It's like my second favourite of all the countries I've visited, not that I've visited that many but /still/. Romania <3 
> 
> Thank you for reading! <3


	2. anne/a, september 2001

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Do you miss me tonight?_
> 
> _Are you sorry we drifted apart?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for taking so long, guys!! I'll try to post the next chapter asap!! 
> 
> two things: 1-- Aubrey is probably not going to be all that likable for a while, and 2-- I binge-read Persuasion this week and oh boy, Aubrey is such an Anne Elliot :')

Pablo Picasso, _Weeping Woman_

*

Some mothers

are graveyards—a field of want 

buried beneath other fields of want.

~Faylita Hicks, _The Birth Mother’s Red Bath for Courage_

*

His last night at home, Aubrey curls up into a comma on his bed and waits for his mother not to come, but she – ever full of surprises – won’t let herself be predictable and knocks twice just before twelve. Aubrey stares at the wall and wonders if it’ll be like following stage directions for a play he could read but would never write: her a normal parent checking up on her normal kid in their normal house.

He sits up because he’s sixteen now and sixteen is too old to risk what he doubts he’d actually get: his body laid out like something for her to curl around.

“Your hair’s still wet,” she says when she walks in, no smile, no laugh. “You’ll get a cold.”

“I don’t think that I will,” Aubrey says, not to be contrary, not at all. Just to— Just so she knows— He’s the tallest in his year, and his nose never runs, and there’s nothing for her to worry about. “Your hair’s still wet, too.”

Wet because shower, but wet because there was rain before: wet because she said let’s go for a walk, and Aubrey hated her so much that he thought _no_ , but loved her even more and said yes.

She kicks off her shoes now – is this, Aubrey wonders absently, what marks a home as unhappy? People walking around it in their shoes? – and climbs onto the bed. She does what he’d refused himself without shame, curling up on her side like a cat waiting to be stroked.

“What’s this?” she hums, shoving her hand under his pillow. “A diary?”

“I don’t keep a diary,” Aubrey says, amused by the snooping. “And if I did, it’d be in Russian, and in code, too.”

“Since when do you know Russian?” his mother laughs, gaping.

“Since June,” Aubrey says, quickly counting back the weeks. “I don’t like reading translations, but I like—

”

“Dostoyevsky?”

“Tolstoy, too.”

A shudder goes through her. “Not Tolstoy, not when I’m putting you on a train tomorrow. The last thing I need is to imagine Anna Karenina when I kiss you goodbye.”

Aubrey smiles, wry. There’ll be no kissing. “About that—”

“I _am_ driving you,” she insists, leafing through the copy of _Persuasion_ he keeps under his pillow now that his bedside table is for law books only. “Even if you don’t say a word to me the whole way there.”

“We’re talking now,” Aubrey says, trying not to sound _too_ apologetic. “We’ve been talking.”

She smiles, half-bitter, half-not-quite-sweet, and Aubrey stares, wondering how come the frustration is still stronger than the guilt. Perhaps he’s a terrible person. Perhaps everyone who’s ever called him kind was wrong.

It’s just that inside his head, there’s an only-sometimes-locked room in which there’s a whole other world, one that has his and his mother’s exact copies in it but doesn’t have one of his father, one that has packed-to-bursting suitcases and maps and smiles. He’s been trying – and failing – to forgive her for how she’s been taking sledgehammers to the contents of that world for years.

“I’ve read this one, you know,” his mother says, tapping the cover of _Persuasion_ with her nail. “You’re just like this Anne Elliot, aren’t you? More so than like Anna Karenina, for sure.”

“Just like Anne Elliot?” Aubrey repeats, amused. “Miserable?”

“Oh, not yet,” his mother laughs. “Not if I have any say— And you’re not… oh, seven and twenty yet, are you? Not a spinster yet, are you?”

She winks and then puts the book under his pillow. “What I want for you is the opposite of that, don’t you see?” she hisses, keeping her hand there, on the cover.

“Well, I want the opposite of that for _you_ ,” Aubrey doesn’t say.

“But I’m already older than that,” she says like she’s heard it anyway. “Older than twenty-seven, married, and without a long lost love still wanting me a decade later.”

*

Halfway through August, Aubrey’s father stopped in the doorway of Aubrey’s room and cleared his throat.

“There are people I want you to meet this summer,” he said without crossing the threshold or taking off his shoes.

“Of course,” Aubrey said simply.

His father glanced at the uneven stack of books on his bedside table.

“I don’t expect much,” he said slowly, half-threat and half— No, not regret. Not that.

“No,” Aubrey agreed because disagreeing was out of the question. If he’d been braver, he’d have said, _how do you expect me to make a good lawyer if you want me this docile?_

“Your performance at this… school of yours,” his father started, the ‘school’ like a euphemism for something more insulting, the ‘performance’ like something Easy would snort at, “has been adequate.”

 _Adequate_ , Aubrey thought later, staring into the mirror and prodding the bag under his right eye with his finger. Someone had told him something about parental expectations, he was sure, but he couldn’t remember what it was, his head too full of things he’d learned to meet them.

*

In the car, his mother sings.

_Are you lonesome tonight_

_Do you miss me tonight?_

_Are you sorry we drifted apart?_

Shirley Allen is many things, but subtle isn’t one of them.

“I wish you’d drive more carefully,” Aubrey sighs.

“You sound like a fussing wife,” she laughs. “This _is_ my careful.”

“Makes one wonder how reckless a driver you are when it’s just you.”

She hums, amused. “Why do they always make sad songs so sweet?” she complains, drumming her fingers on the wheel.

“Why do you put sugar on grapefruits?”

“Touché,” she laughs and the drive, which is a few hours long, feels like minutes, feels like days, time rolled thick and then stretched thin like dough.

“Well, now!” his mother says once they park after one hour of struggling through London traffic. “I’m going to accompany you to the platform.”

Here, too, there’s no point disagreeing, but here, at least, Aubrey can’t be sure that he actually wants to.

They’re not late, exactly, but the train is already there when they arrive at the station, both a disappointment and relief.

“All right, then,” Aubrey says and – hating himself – hauls his luggage inside without letting his mother have that goodbye kiss. They were never about touching, anyway, the two of them.

“Why, hello,” Kipp says with an arched eyebrow when Aubrey looks up from his suitcase. He’s grown taller – almost as tall as Aubrey himself – and lean like a twig besides. His hair is even more artfully messy than Aubrey remembers it, and his nose is peeling because ‘Greetings from Mallorca’ was written across the postcard Aubrey got from him a few weeks ago.

“You have a tan,” Aubrey says in lieu of a greeting because, vain as he is, Kipp will probably appreciate it more than a hello.

“You have… shoulders,” Kipp says with an appraising look.

“Well,” Aubrey says, puzzled. “Everyone does.”

Kipp rolls his eyes and starts babbling about how they’ve found a compartment, and how Quickly got this weird haircut, and how this and that, leading him through the corridor. Aubrey can hear Jerusalem yelling and smiles, convinced that he’d find them by voice alone even if Kipp hadn’t been there to collect him.

When they get there, everyone’s already there, and Aubrey smiles at all of them in turn save for—

There’s a thought knocking in his head that he won’t face directly, and that translates to him refusing to face Easy directly as well. He only gets glimpses out of the corner of his eye as Easy climbs the seats and tries to tug a jumper free – a bent knee, a stretched arm, a shoulder blade under a loose shirt, too many bones, and both too little and too much grace that, unlike Kipp’s, seems almost accidental.

 _Why won’t you look at him?_ , Aubrey asks himself, frustrated, but whatever the reason, he finds that he’d rather not know it.

“Don’t tell me you’ve grown even taller, AA,” Jerusalem gasps, more freckled and wild-eyed than ever. “Why, you _have_!”

“Well, _someone_ ’s certainly grown _louder_ ,” Kipp says under his breath, just loud enough to earn himself a slap on the shoulder.

“Oh, I missed you bores!” Jerusalem says, wrapping one arm around Aubrey’s shoulders, and the other around Kipp’s.

“Is it too late to change compartments?” Quickly mumbles, watching her warily. “How come your stockings are already all over the place? You haven’t even opened your suitcase!”

“I’m more worried about the feathers,” Regina says, plucking one from her sleeve.

“It’s from this feather boa I bought for Kipp,” Jerusalem explains with pride.

“I don’t want it,” Kipp says, horrified.

“It’s ruby red, though.”

“…I’m reconsidering.”

“Hey, Aubrey,” Easy says, and Aubrey can’t not look, he’s not strong enough, he hasn’t heard his name from Easy’s mouth enough times to get used to it and build up an immunity. “Isn’t that your mother?”

He’s still up on the seat, arms folded over the top of the open window, staring at Aubrey over his shoulder with raised eyebrows. Aubrey thinks of how – and hasn’t he thought it before? He could swear that he’s already thought it before – it’s unclear whether _Girl With a Pearl Earring_ is turning towards the viewer or turning away, and, how, deep down inside, he’s always known it’s the former anyway.

Easy has grown too, a little. Those bones— He makes Aubrey think of easily broken valuables, wind chimes, bird feeders, china. His curls are unruly, tangling to his ears and falling over half of his forehead, and his eyes are all things golden: it suddenly seems to Aubrey that it’d be illogical to compare them to honey, or beer, or resin, that, rather, it’s those things that should be described by comparing them to Easy’s eyes.

It takes Aubrey a beat longer than it should to cross the compartment and glance out the window.

“Sure is,” he sighs when he spots his mother standing a dozen feet away and smiling absently at the train.

Easy glances at him, raises an eyebrow, and then scowls. Next Aubrey knows, Easy’s cupping his hands around his mouth and taking a deep breath, preparing to yell.

“Hey! Aubrey’s Mum!” he shouts because _of course_ he’d address her like that. “Over here!”

Aubrey’s mother turns to stare at them and smiles at Easy, but doesn’t come closer. Aubrey feels it when the train starts moving and resists putting a steadying hand on Easy’s shoulder – a good thing, too, since Easy, for the first time ever, doesn’t seem to need it.

“We’ll make sure he’ll be home for Christmas this year, too!” Easy shouts.

Aubrey’s mother smiles, a real one. “Do you promise?” she shouts back.

“I’m not so free with promises,” Easy says when they’re level with her.

“I see,” Aubrey’s mother says as the train starts gaining speed and she stays inches and then feet behind. “I believe you anyway!”

They exchange smiles, and they’re almost out of earshot when she cups her hands around her own mouth to yell something.

“You come, too!” she shouts. “I’ll expect you, Ezra!”

Aubrey thinks of things he could yell himself – _you don’t get to do this, stop looking so sad, I’ll miss you, drive carefully, see you soon_ – but it’s too late: he’s missed his chance, she wouldn’t hear him now.

Not that he’d say anything if she could hear him.

“It’s fine if you’re not – uh, _fine_ with it,” Easy says, turning so his back is pressed to the window, hair blowing in the wind. “I wouldn’t want to impose.”

He slants a sideways glance at Aubrey and Aubrey recognizes what he’s been doing: it’s like walking into a museum room where you know to expect a famous Van Gogh, and circling it to see all the other paintings first, catching the Van Gogh from the corner of one’s eye but not daring to face it directly until the right moment, only when _is_ the right moment when the room is crowded with others, when it will never be special because it’ll never be just for you?

He looks away.

“Impose?” he laughs. “You sound like me.”

“I do, don’t I?” Easy says with a scowl. “How awful.”

Aubrey smiles and thinks, angrily, at himself: _you have no business being this happy to see him._

*

“I’m sure this will be a wonderful year for you all,” December Graham says with a brilliant smile after dinner. Rumour has it her collection is one Paul Klee short as of this week, and her youngest orphan is a wide-eyed thing, his legs too short to reach the floor when he takes a seat by the table that is too big for him as well.

*

Easy’s drawing mania is over: now, he only shields his sketchbook every now and then, usually drawing things he doesn’t mind others seeing.

His inexplicable friendship with Lavinia Pye is _not_ over.

“Regina?” Aubrey says when, a week into classes, her knuckles go white as she squeezes her spoon, staring at where Easy is grumbling about something a few feet away, Lavinia brushing her fingers through his hair.

“I suppose I’m… jealous,” she says, curious, like she’s never experienced the emotion before. “Do you think we could ever be friends, me and her?”

Aubrey glances at where Lavinia is now stealing carrot off Easy’s plate and finds that he’s jealous, too, only why should he be, when he himself never cared that much about being friends with Lavinia?

“In theory,” he says slowly, trying for something between kindness and honesty.

“No, I don’t think we could,” Regina decides, matter-of-fact. “Not even in theory.”

*

“ _Julius Caesar_ ,” Teddy says in an inspired voice, spreading his arms.

“Didn’t you graduate last year?” Jerusalem says, bored. “I’m sure I remember you graduating.”

Teddy gives her a stern look and clears his throat. “Which is why Aubrey here is in charge. I’m just supervising since uni doesn’t start till—”

“If Aubrey’s in charge, why the hell do _you_ get to decide what play we’re doing?” Jerusalem snorts. “Caesar, of all things! There are hardly any female roles in it, and where will you find almost thirty senators _anyway_ …”

“Oh, but you don’t mind cross-dressing, do you?” Teddy says, waving his hand dismissively. “And here’s a thought: we can engage first-years, so long as Beauchamp agrees. They always whine about how they’re not allowed to participate, so I’m guessing they’ll just love having the opportunity to run fake swords through Caesar and spill some fake blood.”

“But why not _Macbeth_?” Jerusalem whines. “Oh, what I wouldn’t give to play Lady Macbeth…”

“Aubrey?” Kipp says, tilting his head and throwing him a challenging look.

Aubrey clears his throat and straightens his shoulders. “I like Caesar.”

“Then it’s decided!” Teddy crows, triumphant. “Now, I know that you won’t like this, but Jonathan has to be Caesar, all right? It’s his last year here and he’ll need stuff like this for his uni application…”

“You’ve graduated!” Jerusalem protests. “You don’t make the rules!”

“May _be_ ,” Teddy says with an evil glint in his eye, “but aren’t you just _dying_ to run a sword through him, fake or not?”

“ _I’m_ dying to,” Easy says with a grin. “So who will I be?”

“Our instigator Cassius, of course.”

“If he’s Cassius, who am _I_ supposed to be?” Jerusalem protests. “I don’t want to be a wuss like Brutus!”

“A wuss,” Aubrey mouths to himself. “How about Mark Antony?” he proposes aloud. “If someone can carry his speech, it’s you.”

“Oh!” Jerusalem perks up. “The one where he turns the people against the senators with all the pretty words?”

“Well, I suppose you could put it that way…”

“Can I be Brutus, then?” Kipp says cheerfully, slinging an arm over Easy’s shoulders and raising an eyebrow at Aubrey. “I just think that me and Easy here are the only ones with enough range to pull off the homoerotic tension there.”

“Gross,” Easy groans, trying to shrug his arm off in vain.

“Love you too, darling,” Kipp says, giving him a kiss on the cheek that’s more sound than anything else. “Aubrey?”

“If you want to,” Aubrey says with a half-shrug. He schools his face until he’s positive that whatever Kipp’s looking for in it won’t be found.

*

The orphan December recruited last year integrated without any issues but the one she’s brought with her this year won’t talk, won’t eat, and won’t sleep. His name is Phillip and he looks like wind would carry him away if he so much as stepped outside.

“I’d think this is nicer than whatever orphanage she found him in,” Jerusalem says halfway into September, apropos of nothing.

“Oh, what do you know,” Easy sighs. The kid, Phillip, has been sleeping in his bed for the past week, much to Easy’s roommates’ annoyance. “This place is too good to be true, sure. So has it really never occurred to you that someone like him, someone who’s not used to this, must be thinking, well, _is_ it true?”

Jerusalem blinks at him and then grins. “But it _is_ true. He’ll know soon enough.”

Easy looks doubtful but he doesn’t say anything, going back to sketching a castle between clouds that may, or may not, be made of sand.

*

“Why do you like Caesar so much, anyway?” Easy says one day, rightly guessing that it’s Aubrey’s favourite Shakespeare.

“Because everyone’s motivations make sense,” Aubrey explains with a smile. “No one is at fault, and everyone is. There’s no good vs. evil, there’s just people and circumstances.”

“Right.”

“And the language _is_ , as Jerry put it, pretty.”

“She’s right, anyway,” Easy says, arching his eyebrow. “You did get taller.”

“What does that have to do with Caesar?”

“Nothing whatsoever,” Easy laughs, reaching for Aubrey’s glasses. Aubrey just stands there, nonplussed, and lets him take them. “How can you see anything? They’re all smudged.” Easy clicks his tongue and cleans them with the hem of his shirt before checking the glass and putting them back on Aubrey’s nose. “ _There_.”

Aubrey, who can now see Easy clearly, is careful to look away before—

Before.

“It’s stupid,” Easy says, “but September might just be my favourite of all months.”

Aubrey glances at him, surprised, and oh, he couldn’t stop the smile if he tried. “Really?” he says and doesn’t disclose that it’s his favourite as well: after all, he’s pretty sure that Easy already knows.

*

He doesn’t talk to Dora Maar anymore, not really, but if he did, here’s what he’d tell her:

_You’re the reason I came here, but you’re not the reason I’m happy here._

The first time he calls his mother from school, it's already October.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!!! <3 <3 <3


	3. gold/blue, blue/gold, october 2001

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> all things autumn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, guys, I have a problem. I don't know if I should post the next chapter about the kids (a fairly important one & a direct continuation to this one) after this, or one about Alfie & Yante. I feel like it's time to check up on Alfie, but also?? important kids chapter?? I have no clue which one I should post first so please, if you have a preference, do let me know!!! <3

Vincent Van Gogh, _The Mulberry Tree in Autumn_

*

“I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”

~ L. M. Montgomery, _Anne of Green Gables_

*

Under the trees, Easy sprawls on the quilt of fallen leaves, dragging his arms up and down and causing them to rustle.

“Here’s the thing,” he says with closed eyes. “If I met this Anne Shirley in person, I’d definitely hate her, but she sure was right about Octobers.”

The leaves are all shades of gold, more than Aubrey imagined existed, and he won’t join Easy because it’d be too self-indulgent: all these yellows, autumn like a soft bed to sink into, Easy himself. How they’ve already been gorging themselves on the season, spoiling themselves rotten with these sweet months of being here, in this imperfect-but-perfect place. Gluttony at its finest, and no wonder after all summer of hunger.

Easy rolls over, spreads the leaves, and presses his nose to the wet earth. “Sometimes I get what Jerusalem means when she says she could eat the whole world,” he sighs.

“You’re sick,” Kipp says, wrinkling his nose in disapproval. He, too, is sprawled on the ground, but with Aubrey’s coat for a blanket.

“You will be if you keep that up, anyway,” Aubrey tells Easy, watching him crush leaves in his fists and press the crumbs to his nose the way he’s seen his mother do with fresh baguettes. There must be paintings like the scene in front of him, but, for the life of him, he can’t remember any. It’s James Jacques Joseph Tissot but more fire and less frilly dresses, Renoir but more urgent, Klimt but less geometrical.

“I don’t get sick,” Easy says with an arrogant tilt to his chin as he rolls onto his back yet again. “I have red mercury in my veins.”

“Red mercury is a hoax,” Aubrey points out. Easy rolls his eyes, but, personally, Aubrey counts it progress: once, he would have used polysyllabic words to explain just why it’s a hoax in an elitist parody of English.

“What do you think happens to kids like me?” Easy says, quirking an eyebrow. “We either die at birth or live and live and live. Orphanage boys can’t afford a delicate constitution, see.”

“Why are you staring at me?” Kipp protests. “I don’t have a delicate constitution!”

“You literally stole Aubrey’s coat to have something to sit on, and you don’t eat hard-boiled eggs because they ‘don’t agree with you.’”

Aubrey’s name in Easy’s mouth again – a phenomenon that occurs often enough nowadays that he’s long lost count, but nowhere near often enough for him to grow used to it – might as well be red mercury, for what it does to him. 

“Look here,” Kipp says, sliding his fingers into Easy’s hair just above his ear. “You’re all sweaty, and I bet you’ll have a runny nose by tomorrow.”

“No way,” Easy insists. He doesn’t pull away. Rather, he leans into it, arching like a cat, and Aubrey can’t help but remember how, once, this privilege of closeness used to be his and his alone. “And even if, then so what? I’m not—”

“Yes?” Kipp prods, amused.

“—Some delicate flower, all right?”

“Oh, I know _that_ ,” Kipp assures him. “You’re more stubborn weed than anything.”

Easy, too content surrounded by all things autumnal, doesn’t even bother kicking him. He reminds Aubrey of Jerusalem like this, and not just in looks: the open delight is a rare thing, very much Easy but also very much _not_ , as if he’s forgotten his scowl back at the dormitories, not just his scarf. Easy allowing himself the carelessness of enjoying things for all the world to see is a result of the lucky concurrence of quite the number of things: there’s autumn at its loveliest like a painting that hasn’t quite dried yet, there’s Jonathan Small too busy thinking of his university applications to torment them, and there’s a new set of pastels December gave Easy last week, a gift he’ll use too fast to worry about her ever taking it back.

There are other reasons too, but Aubrey doesn’t like thinking of those, since he doubts he himself makes the list. Still, he _does_ think of them: Lavinia teaching Easy waltz in the common room, laughing in his ear whenever he missteps, Kipp dragging him off to ‘practice our Shakespearean almost-romance somewhere _private_ ’, December meeting his eyes across the classroom every week, and her strange friends – the one she calls May, and the one she never addresses that May refers to as ‘Berry’ – pulling on Easy’s cheeks whenever they stop by and he happens to walk past, fussing over him like fairy godmothers.

(Aubrey’s always thought Easy more than deserving of good things, and he doesn’t like what it says about him that he minds that the rest of the world seems to have finally caught up.)

“You have earth on your nose,” Kipp tells Easy.

Easy only laughs, tossing leaves up in the air and smiling blissfully as they fall on top of him, the happiest burial Aubrey’s ever seen.

Perhaps it’s like Van Gogh’s _The Mulberry Tree in Autumn_ , except their sky – coloured by sunset now – is all gold itself rather than blue.

Maybe, Aubrey decides, the blue is all his. Maybe it’s how he’ll remember this moment despite the lack of space for any cold colours in the picture they must make. 

*

“ _Men at some time are masters of their fates. / The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves, that we are underlings_ ,” Easy recites. He doesn’t sound convinced, but Teddy asks him to go again, and he gets it right the second time.

Later, the first attempt is what Aubrey remembers best.

*

“Easy?”

Easy’s head jerks up and he squints at Quickly with visible effort. “What?”

“I wanted you to pass the salt, but seeing as this is the third time I’m saying this, I’ll settle for asking if you’re all right.”

Easy blinks at him owlishly, and then frowns at his soup. He sniffles, and then shoves the salt shaker across the table. It lands in front of Jerusalem rather than Quickly.

“I’m fine,” Easy says after clearing his throat.

“If you’re sure,” Quickly says, eyeing him warily. 

“Am sure,” Easy insists, his spoon tilting and all the soup spilling back into his bowl. “Why does this taste like liquid cardboard anyway?”

Quickly watches him with wide eyes, and then he sighs. “Oh, boy.”

*

“This is _bullshit_ ,” Easy groans two hours later. “I don’t _get_ sick.”

“Denial won’t get you far,” Quickly scolds. “If you don’t want me to drag you to the infirmary, you better swallow.”

He holds three pills in a cupped hand, and Easy scowls, but eats them one by one before slumping against the arm of the common room couch with a pitiful moan.

“The common cold: one, Easy: zero,” Kipp says in a sing-song voice. Easy tosses a pillow his way, though perhaps ‘his way’ is too generous, seeing as it misses Kipp by four feet at least and hits Jerusalem in the stomach instead.

“I mean, I told you—”

“If you say ‘I told you so’, I’ll eat your rabbit,” Easy threatens.

“I don’t _have_ a rabbit, idiot.”

“Your firstborn, then.”

“Don’t have that either.”

“Not _yet_.”

“Everyone shut up!” Quickly says irritably. “Listen, you better eat vegetables and drink lots of liquids. You’re lucky it’s Friday. If you’re not better by Monday, I’m taking you to the nurse, whether you like it or not.”

“I _don’t_ like it,” Easy snaps.

“Why is it that the world is ending every time a boy gets a cold?” Jerusalem says, shaking her head. “Makes one wonder what the lot of you would do if you had to brave periods.”

“The world is _not_ ending,” Easy protests, throwing his arms up. “I’m _fine_!”

“ _I’m bine!_ ” Kipp mocks, pinching his nose. “If we all catch it from you, I’m suing.”

“At least it’s good timing,” Regina says with a small smile.

“Good _how_?” Easy asks, scowling at her.

“See, I’m almost done knitting your mug cosy,” she explains. “I figure it’ll prove useful now.”

Easy falls back against the couch with a groan, and it’s then, when his guard is down, that Kipp ends up claiming that ‘I told you so’ at last.

*

The corridor light is already out by the time Aubrey gets back from the library but Easy, bless him, clears his throat before Aubrey can trip over him. Aubrey squints and can just make him out: a small shape drowning in a blanket, eyes glinting.

Aubrey allows himself a self-indulgent “Jesus”.

“Michael and Peter kicked me out,” Easy explains. “They said they wouldn’t have me sneezing all over them, which is just stupid. As if I’d want to get close enough to them to do that.”

Aubrey sighs and improvises an argumentative essay in order to get Easy to follow him to his dormitory. Once they’ve stumbled inside, Quickly folds his arms across his chest and scrutinises their room like it’s a battlefield just before sunrise and he’s trying to think of the best strategy.

“You’ll have one bed and it’ll be the quarantine zone,” he decides after a solid five minutes of deliberating. “Two of us will have to share.”

“I’m not sharing,” Kipp says hurriedly. “I need a whole bed to myself. I’m spoiled.”

“Yes,” Quickly says dryly. “We know.”

“I can sleep on the floor,” Aubrey offers.

“See?” Kipp says brightly. “Aubrey can sleep on the floor.”

“Shouldn’t _I_ sleep on the floor?” Easy says with a raised eyebrow. “Seeing as I’m the impostor and all.”

“I believe the word is ‘guest’,” Quickly corrects.

“No, I think ‘impostor’ checks out,” Kipp says innocently, making a show of inspecting his nails.

“You can’t sleep on the floor because we don’t want this to turn into pneumonia,” Quickly tells Easy patiently. “Just take Aubrey’s bed, and the two of us will share.”

Easy glares at him for some reason, but ends up placing his book – something called _Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit_ that Aubrey’s not familiar with – on Aubrey’s pillow.

“Let me change the sheets first,” he offers.

“No need,” Easy snaps, getting under the covers with his back to them and burying himself beneath them until he’s just a mound of off-white quilt.

“Well, that was productive,” Kipp says, stretching his arms above his head. “I don’t know about you two, but I have a lovely dream about chocolate truffles and Aubrey Hepburn to get back to. A clue: there might have been feeding involved.”

“Too much information,” Quickly sighs.

Kipp kisses him on the cheek and then climbs in his bed with a downright malicious ‘sleep tight’, and later, small though Quickly is, it is quite tight indeed.

*

“I hate this,” Easy complains the next day after dinner when it’s just the two of them and he’s already snug in Aubrey’s bed.

“Yes, you said,” Aubrey says, turning a page of his copy of the _Julius Caesar_ script. “I think we should cut this bit here…”

Easy sighs and jerks the script out of his hand to toss it across Aubrey’s desk.

“Now, that was unnecessary,” Aubrey sighs. 

“It was your choice to share the quarantine zone,” Easy says with a careless shrug. Aubrey – stupid, stupid – didn’t even realise that he automatically settled by his bed at Easy’s side. He feels strangely awkward now Easy’s pointed it out: ungainly inside his own body now he’s been reminded he has one.

“I’m afraid Jerry might be right,” Aubrey sighs. “When boys get sick, it _is_ the end of the world.”

“ _You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things! / O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome_ ,” Easy recites dryly. “See, I’ve been practicing.”

“Yes, very good, except they’re not _your_ lines.”

“Details,” Easy mumbles, burying his face in Aubrey’s pillow until all Aubrey can see of it through his mess of locks is one unblinking eye. “I think I have a fever. Do you think I have a fever?”

“Yes. We established that three hours ago.”

“We did?” Easy says with a frown. “Huh.”

“Oh, _really_?”

“It’s just unfair, is all. A fever, a blocked nose, _and_ a sore throat? Gee, it’s almost like the world hates me or something.”

“Easy on the sarcasm there,” Aubrey warns. “Just in case there’s no infinite supply of it.”

“Blah, blah, blah,” Easy mumbles. “I’ve dreamt about the horses. Horse. I’ve dreamt about it.”

“You have?”

“It was alive, and not paint, and when I touched it, it stayed.”

“Where was it?”

“Don’t know. A field. A nice, wide field. No one there but me and the horse.”

“You should go to sleep.”

“Here’s the thing,” Easy whispers. “No one knows where it is, but where do you imagine it?”

He falls asleep before Aubrey can answer, which is just as well, because the truth is, Aubrey only ever imagines it over Easy’s bed.

 _The Tower of Blue Horses_ , too, is all blue and gold, only the other way around. Aubrey can’t help but wonder if that’s why Easy likes it so: all that sad trapped in a forever of happy.

Two hours later, when he pushes the door open after a trip down to the kitchen, Easy is awake, doodling all over Aubrey’s script.

“Here,” Aubrey says, handing him a mug wrapped in the cosy Regina finished the day before.

Easy frowns at the thick liquid like he doesn’t trust it to be anything other than poison. “Milky,” he says, like a complaint. “What is it?”

“Tea with butter,” Aubrey says, adjusting the pillow trapped between his back and the wall for him. “And no, I didn’t just drop the butter there.”

“Oh.”

“Mmm.”

“Well—” Easy starts, gone red like the fever’s suddenly gotten worse. “Well, I’m sure it’s disgusting _any_ way.”

But, of course, he can’t mean it, and when he takes the first sip, he doesn’t quite manage to hide the contented smile.

*

December Graham gets sick as well, and Aubrey appreciates the irony of it: her, a pretend-mother for Easy, in perfect harmony with him as though they really share a house and germs and not just a school.

So December Graham gets sick as well, only hers seems much worse. Aubrey knows because he happens to be there when she’s about to keel over in front of her office and manages to catch her in time.

“Oh, this is bad,” she sighs, leaning on him. “Oh, this is _very_ bad.”

“It’s the season,” he says diplomatically. “I’m sure you’ll get well soon.”

“You don’t understand,” she says, frustrated. “He’s selling it this week.”

“Sorry?”

“ _The Beach at Fecamp_ ,” she explains, and Aubrey remembers that article he read years and years ago, the newspaper page with the tasteless _From Rags to Peaches_ for a headline that led him here. “He’s selling it this week, and I need to be there to _buy_ it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading <3


	4. the spark that starts a fire, october 2001

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> wherein an obscene amount of money is mentioned but never specified 
> 
> (because who the hell am I to price a Monet, come on)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my god, guys, this chapter killed me, I think. It's one of those chapters I've had planned for months and couldn't wait to write but guess what.... this just doesn't live up to what it was like in my head. It's like when you imagine you'll make yourself an omelet but get something between scrambled eggs and fried eggs and also it falls off the pan and onto your shoes, and also your cat steals it before you can decide if you're desperate enough to eat it off the floor.
> 
> anyway, I tried :''') Also, I decided to post the kids' chapter first for the sake of continuity, but worry not, for I will post Alfie's chapter tomorrow. (Alfie's is a direct continuation of this one, too, so I guess it works out better that way). 
> 
> Ohhh and this mentions a... condition? December has, but the symptoms are never clearly specified, so, just to let you know, it's not anything fatal. It's just that I can't imagine her telling the kids about it, so I'll probably explain in the 'origins'!

Jennie Harbour, _The Little Match Girl_

*

But then, once in a lifetime

The longed for tidal wave

Of justice can rise up

And hope and history rhyme.

~Seamus Heaney, _The Cure at Troy_

*

Three days after she almost collapsed, December Graham welcomes them in her office, pyjamas and a bathrobe on, socked feet up on the desk, a mug half-filled with liquor at her elbow.

“Why not just go home and rest?” Kipp asks, somewhat rudely.

“ _Home_ ,” December snorts after a slurping sip of the tea Kipp brought her – Kipp the selfish narcissist, who never makes _any_ one tea. “Funny.”

Whatever kind of sick she is, it’s not the sort that goes away. Aubrey watches her – pale, sweaty, a mess – and wonders if that’s why she keeps disappearing, business here, business there, an empty spot at the teacher’s table every few weeks.

“Just explain about the painting,” Jerusalem sighs, leaning on one of December’s bookshelves. “Honestly.”

It was Easy’s idea to come, and he didn’t tell anyone but Aubrey about it, but, somehow, they found themselves joined by the rest anyway.

“No manners whatsoever,” December says, amused. “Listen, I’m not sick. Not exactly.”

“Oh?” Kipp says, picking up her trinkets one by one. He turns them over in his hands, gently like they’re all made of porcelain, even though none are. “Then?”

“Not sick like Ezra here,” December explains, drumming her fingers on the desk. Easy sneezes as if to prove her point, not yet cured by Quickly’s prescription of lemon, sugar, and mint drops. “With me, it’s a monthly thing.”

“You a werewolf, or something?” Easy says with a scowl.

December smiles. “I’m afraid I’ll be quite useless for the next few days. It’s not always as bad and I hoped… It’s too late now, anyway. They’re selling the painting this evening.”

“ _Explain_ ,” Jerusalem repeats, impatient. 

December sighs, and then – will wonders never cease? – she does.

The story goes like this:

I was a poor kid, very Gatsby, only even more of a Miss Nobody from Nowhere, what with the orphan status, and then someone saved me. Imagine someone coming for the Little Match Girl sometime before she dies and scooping her up into warmth – imagine someone bad being that good.

Because – and this is important – he was no guardian angel.

What’s that? A guardian devil? Now, that’s a good one!

Anyway, there’s more of us. There are twelve of us. Why, yes, we _are_ each named after a month. Cheesy? Oh, he’d just love that! Ridiculous? Mmm, I agree. This isn’t meant for your ears, but have it anyway: there was hunger, and there were rats, and it was cold. There was stealing. That’s how it started, and, frankly, I didn’t mind. I was too busy being miserable to mind. Moral codes are a luxury when the only thing one’s full of is, ironically, the lack of things. 

His name? Oh, but can’t you guess it? Yes, yes, very good, only can you guess why?

Bra _vo_! That’s exactly what he said! January comes after December, and so he made a palimpsest out of us – me, and him all over everything I was, if you will.

But let’s forget him.

What do you mean, _no_?

Listen. This story is not about him. This story is all about me.

Well, all right, all right, I’ll tell you more. He was— Scary. Hungry. No, not hungry. Well, yes, hungry, but the hunger was almost secondary. More than hungry, he was _greedy_. He wanted the world, but even the world wouldn’t sate him: no matter how much you’d give him, he’d always want more. 

So there. That’s what he was like, and that’s what, I’m sad to report, he’s like still.

Now, it took me a while, I admit, but, eventually, I started thinking of art as something that should be for everyone. Art was – cliché as it sounds – the light that led me out of a very dark tunnel, and I kept thinking, what if I’d had it sooner?

Here’s a question for you. A little homework, if you will.

When does a safe house become a cage?

So there I was, troubled, conflicted, torn, trapped, hid away from the world like a Bluebeard’s wife but not dangling dead like one, not just yet: but oh, there were keys I started getting my hands on, and it was no fairy tale, so they didn’t stain red, and yet I knew better than to think _he_ wouldn’t learn of it. I might have been a book written in a language he didn’t know, but he was a quick learner, and so it wouldn’t stay that way for long.

Enter Malcolm Graham.

Oh, how to describe my darling husband to you?

Out of the frying pan and into the fire, but, of course, I didn’t know that then. We met like the first chapter of a book: a gallery opening, me loitering outside in a second-hand coat and hungering to go in, he the bored guest of honour, busy fiddling with his cufflinks on the side of the road.

Handsome? Oh, yes, I suppose he was. That’s where it gets odd because me — I’m sure you’ll agree I’m no beauty.

Well, I must have had something all the same. He looked up from his cufflinks – cufflinks, I’d learn later, more expensive than everything I’d ever owned put together – and there I was.

He’d call me many things over the years: his Adele Bloch Bauer, his Anna Pavlova…

…his Dora Maar.

But here’s the thing: all I ever was was some Cinderella he hoped to dust off into prettiness. You could even argue that he succeeded: I’m no beauty, but I do turn heads every now and then.

He wanted to give me the world. That’s how it started for me: the novelty of someone who, having already had it, no longer wanted it all for himself.

Like I said, out of the frying pan and into the fire.

He said, marry me, Dee, marry me, and you’ll have it all.

Well, I was greedy myself. Well, sue me.

Or _was_ it greed?

Truth is, I did want some paintings all to myself.

Truth is, I wanted them for others _more_. Others like me – the me of once-upon-a-time, the me that could have died if it hadn’t been for that boy with pockets full of lies – poor, hungry, alone. We talk about what people need and we say water, and we say nutrition, and we say rest, and we say warmth, and, sometimes, when we’re feeling particularly brave, we’ll dare say they need love, too. Everything else is supposed to be secondary, a bonus you’re supposed to earn in this never-ending game for cheaters, but here’s my thesis, the one I’ve been writing in my head my whole life: it’s _not_ secondary. Beauty, conversation, art: we need all that, too, and we deserve it without having to sell our souls to the devil, or to the gods, whoever will take them.

Hmm?

 _Now_ you get it. He promised me the world, and it’s just like you say: once I had it, I was free to do whatever I wished with it.

At first.

Anyway, I started out tentative. I’d point to paintings in newspapers and he’d get them for me – oh! – like this.

But then he said marry me, Dee, and January said, don’t you dare, December, and I knew it was one or the other, open one door and have another shut forever, trap yourself in one of two houses, and better pick the one with a nicer fireplace and a decent number of escape routes. 

That’s the one thing I calculated wrong: the number of escape routes. 

But never mind that now. There was art, yes, but there was this place, too. A middle-of-nowhere, once-mental-institution, shabby-but-glorious wonder of a place.

I want a school here, I told Malcolm. I want a school here, a school that’ll mess with country rankings and have everyone clear their glasses when they see its name in the top three.

A private school, you mean, he said, and oh, was that a wake-up call! Malcolm, he had a lot of money, but he didn’t have enough to get me a prestigious school with no entrance fees.

So we made a deal. There’d be fees, but we’d admit ten orphans per year for free.

Oh, no, you’ve heard that right. I did say ten.

What happened? Ha! Here’s what:

We got married, and there was a dress like a dead swan on me, and there was a suit like enough money to feed ten families on him, and there were some church bells too.

I actually remember the church bells best. It’s how they startle birds into flight, see.

At first, it was bliss. Not marital bliss as such – what, you thought I _loved_ him? – but bliss nonetheless. I was afraid of touching things in the house for fear of tainting them, breaking them, ruining them, but I would touch them anyway because— well, because I _could._ My Mr. Graham was having this place renovated and everything would be just like I wanted: I was the one choosing wall paint, the one deciding what furniture we’d replace, the one picking the paintings.

Here’s where it gets tricky: he wanted to give me the whole world, sure, but he didn’t actually want me to _want_ it. He’d shower me with gifts, but I think he had this idea that I was head-over-heels in love with him and didn’t need anything else.

Bollocks, right?

He was fine with the school and with my charities – my little philanthropist, he’d call me, the patronising bastard – but paintings…

Oh, he’d buy them for me at first. Like this, right? But it didn’t take long for him to realise that—

Well, let’s put it this way. There’d always be three of us in a room. Him, me, and art, my mistress. This, too, was very Gatsby, only now _he_ was the Great: wanting all of me, loyalty, exclusivity, and eternal love, and he wouldn’t hear of having anything less.

Men, right? Do try and grow up better than that, boys.

Anyway, I bet you can guess what comes next. He grew impatient with me and he—

‘You can’t expect me to invite a bunch of dirty street urchins here for nothing, Dee. _Be_ reasonable.’

Reasonable!

So he reminded me of what I’d forgotten all about: how nothing I had was really mine. How it was all his.

And now here we are: years later, still married, and at an eternal stalemate. He wants me, I need him, and, in the meantime, there’s this little deal of ours. One orphan per year – and oh, how I had to fight for it! – in exchange for one painting. He sells them one by one and leaves newspaper clippings of articles on the auctions all over the house for me to see.

“Except it’s been getting worse,” December concludes. “Except now it’s one orphan and however many paintings he wants to do away with.”

“And you can’t do anything,” Jerusalem says, wide-eyed. “You can’t do anything, because none of it is really yours.”

Aubrey watches December and _doesn’t_ watch Easy. How wrong he was, thinking she, of all people, didn’t understand Easy’s complicated relationship with having things.

How very wrong he was, when the clues had been there all along. 

“It’s just a picture,” December says with a brave smile. “I wanted to have it moved here because it looked so lonely in that house— I must have looked like that too, back when I’d stay there, only much uglier.”

“You wanted it moved here, and he’s selling it instead,” Kipp summarises with an unreadable expression.

“It’d be quite the scandal if you bought your own painting,” Jerusalem points out. “Everyone would have your marriage all figured out.”

“And what about money, anyway?” Kipp says. “Since you don’t have any that’s just yours.”

December closes her eyes. “May – you might have seen her here – she promised to pay whatever I’d end up bidding. As for the scandal… I admit, I wasn’t thinking about it.”

“You should have been,” Aubrey points out before he can think better of it. “It’d be like a red rag to a bull. You’d buy it back, but at what cost? Who’s to say he wouldn’t go back on your deal? Who’s to say he wouldn’t close down the school, even?”

“Which is why it’s really for the best,” December says, blinking her eyes open. “That I can’t go.”

“No, it’s not,” Easy says, the words landing like a slap. “It’s _not_.”

“I concur,” Jerusalem sighs. “Boy, what a mess.”

“Why can’t May buy it instead of you?” Regina says.

“Because she’s scared,” December smiles wryly. “Because it all went wrong with us. Because I don’t deserve it. Because she’s Switzerland.”

“Because she won’t,” Kipp corrects. “Can’t you convince her?”

“Sure, if I got in a car now,” December laughs. “Maybe I’d just about make it, but, see— What I need now is a bath, or a bed, not a car. Certainly not a car crash.”

“What if Mr. Rose—”

“Alfie doesn’t drive,” December interrupts, almost sternly. “And he is _not_ getting mixed up in this, anyway.”

“Well, what if we got on a train and convinced this May—”

“She lives in the countryside,” December says, waving her hand at the suggestion like it’s a fly to swat away. “Trains don’t go there, so unless you can drive a car…”

“ _I_ can,” Lavinia Pye says, pushing the door to the office open, “so how about you give me the keys?”

*

“I can’t believe you were just standing there with a glass to the door, eavesdropping like that,” Quickly says two minutes later, shaking his head in disapproval.

“I was sitting, actually,” Lavinia says, leaning on the doorway. “It was quite the lengthy story.”

“Well, _I_ can’t believe you can drive,” Kipp snorts, eyeing her from head to toe.

“Of course I can,” Lavinia says, making a show of inspecting her nails. “It’s the family business.”

“Your father _sells_ cars,” Jerusalem points out. “He’s hardly a _chauffeur_.”

“He drives them, too. For God’s sake—”

“No,” December says, shaking her head. “It’s too late, it’s too dangerous, and it’s too— No. It’s out of the question.”

“Oh, come _on_ ,” Easy says, slamming a book on Monet shut.

“How about we put it to vote?” Kipp suggests, tilting his head at December.

“This is a school, not a democracy.”

“I think you should ask again,” Aubrey tells Lavinia.

Everyone goes quiet as December Graham stares at him, and he wonders if he’s really got her figured out: her fingers have been shaking even if she’s still otherwise, and she might be strong, but he doubts she’s strong enough to say ‘no’ to Lavinia twice.

“The keys?” Lavinia says obligingly, arching an eyebrow.

Slowly, December reaches for her purse. The keys sail through the air and Lavinia catches them one-handed before they can hit her in the face.

“Don’t scratch the car, and don’t get caught.”

“Caught?”

“You’re too young to have a license.”

“That I am,” Lavinia says with a thin smile. “Say ‘please’.”

December frowns, and Aubrey is suddenly reminded of that incident months ago when Lavinia ate Easy’s drawing before December could snatch it. 

“Come on, Lavinia,” Regina sighs, stepping in front of her. “We don’t have time for this.”

Lavinia’s smile widens but she won’t look at Regina, stubbornly staring at December over her shoulder instead.

“You sure grew up proud for someone who started off with nothing and claims to have nothing still,” she says and— Well. It’s impertinent, and maybe it’s even cruel, but – Aubrey can’t deny her one that – it’s also _true_. “Say ‘please’.”

“ _Please_ ,” Regina says, waving a hand in front of Lavinia’s face.

After three heartbeats – Aubrey’s counting – Lavinia’s eyes flick to hers.

“What does it matter to me if _you_ say ‘please’?” she says, all disdain. It’s Lavinia at her snobbiest, and Aubrey— Aubrey almost sees it now, how she doesn’t really mean it, not even a little.

How she means the very opposite.

Regina shrugs, the corner of her lip quirking up.

“I’m not saying ‘sorry’, so ‘please’ seems like the next best thing,” she says, raising an eyebrow, the gauntlet thrown down and waiting to be picked up. “Or should I kneel?”

Lavinia’s cheeks grow red and she stumbles back. Regina follows, taking a careful step forward.

“I _can_ kneel,” she assures, eyes twinkling.

Lavinia tries taking another step back, but her back hits the door all too soon.

“Oh, don’t,” she whispers, though Aubrey suspects she meant for it to come out louder. “I wasn’t being _serious_.”

Regina smiles, seemingly satisfied, but doesn’t step away.

Lavinia clears her throat and glares at December across the room. “I wasn’t being serious but— You’re really a terrible teacher, has anyone ever told you that?”

“I tell myself every morning,” December promises with a small smile. “Tomorrow, I’ll tell myself twice.”

Regina reaches out to adjust Lavinia’s tie for her. This year, Lavinia has stopped wearing her signature ribbon and switched to the uniform ties, a change Aubrey noted but failed to recognise as significant.

“You should get going,” December reminds them, handing Kipp a folded sheet of paper. “Like I said, don’t scratch the car.”

“You can just say ‘be careful’” Kipp laughs, uncrossing his arms to slip the paper in his pocket. “It’s all right.”

He leaves the office without waiting for December’s reply. The others follow, but Easy stays behind, and Aubrey finds himself hesitating in the doorway.

“What do we tell May to get her to come with us?” Easy asks, drumming his fingers on the edge of December’s desk.

December meets Aubrey’s eyes over his shoulder. “Tell her ‘please.’”

Easy sighs, his fingers stilling on the wood. “You _are_ a bad teacher, but you got _Open Sea_ back for me.”

“And now you’ll get me back my _Beach at Fecamp_.”

Aubrey can’t see but the back of his head, but he has the feeling that Easy’s smiling.

*

“How the hell are we all supposed to fit in the car anyway?” Jerusalem demands after a lost battle over the passenger seat with Kipp.

“We’re not,” Easy says, climbing in the back and dragging Aubrey inside. “Clearly, we can’t all go.”

“Well, all right then,” Jerusalem says, clapping her hands together. “Farewell, Francis, Reggie.”

“Sorry, Jerry,” Regina says with a quick smile, sliding inside before Jerusalem can take the last free seat. “Not this time.”

Jerusalem blinks down at her in surprise and then puts her hands on her hips. “So that’s how it’s going to be, hmm?”

“Indeed,” Regina says, slamming the door shut with a sweet smile. “Shall we?”

“Um,” Easy says, frowning at Jerusalem, who’s yelling protests outside and knocking on the window.

“Does she _ever_ shut up?” Lavinia whines from the front, and – well. It’s certainly a sight: Lavinia in the too-big seat, her hands clenching and unclenching on the wheel almost rhythmically, as though to match her heartbeat, which, if that’s indeed the case, must be alarmingly quickened. 

“Are you _sure_ you know how to drive?” Kipp says, turning the page with December’s hastily-scrawled instructions this way and that. “Because we _really_ can’t afford to stall.”

“It’s just— what if a police car pulls us over?”

“What if, what if,” Kipp laughs. “Here.” He reaches across Lavinia to turn the key in the ignition and grins when the car roars to life. “Don’t kill us, and we’ll be fine.”

Lavinia flexes her hands one last time, adjusts the rear-view mirror, exhales, inhales, exhales, and then, slowly, ever so slowly, she backs the car. Aubrey waves at a miserable-looking Jerusalem and a clearly-relieved Quickly, and pulls his newsboy hat off his head.

In the front seat, Kipp is watching Lavinia with an expression that doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. “Not that I’m rushing you—”

“It’s all right,” Regina interrupts, leaning forward to prop her chin on the side of Lavinia’s seat. “Take your time.”

“Time,” Lavinia says, pressing her foot to the accelerator until they start speeding down the driveway, “is what we don’t have.”

“You _do_ know how to drive!” Kipp says, not bothering to hide his surprise.

“Seatbelt,” Aubrey reminds Easy quietly.

“Anyway,” Regina says, leaning forward until her mouth is inches away from Lavinia’s ear. “We’re supposed to turn right before Bullford—”

The car jerks to a stop with a squeal of tires so suddenly that they’re all thrown forward. Aubrey catches Easy – who hasn’t buckled up yet – by the shoulder and pulls him back before he can smash into the back of Kipp’s seat.

“Do not,” Lavinia says, knuckles gone white on the wheel. “Do not _breathe_ on me—” she struggles, the tips of her ears red. “Best don’t even _talk_. And I mean _all_ of you.”

For a moment, the silence is deafening.

“Aye,” Kipp says at last. “Not a word.”

But they’ve only been driving for ten minutes when he turns the radio on and starts singing along to George Michael, all _time can never mend the careless whisper of a good friend._

*

When they park in front of May MacKinnon’s gargantuan house, Lavinia stumbles out of the car and collapses on the gravel.

“It’s all over now,” Kipp says, adjusting the sunglasses he dug out of the glove compartment. “Are you going to throw up? Because I’d rather be far from here when you throw up.”

“Not to rush you all but we have roughly five minutes to convince May to go with us,” Aubrey warns, helping Lavinia to her feet.

“Convince me to go with you where?” May calls from the door, wrapped in a silk bathrobe and watching them with an inscrutable expression.

“You already know where!” Kipp says, spreading his arms. “Come on, we didn’t almost get ourselves killed for nothing!”

“There was no almost-killing,” Regina says, her hand on Lavinia’s shoulder. “Everything was fine.”

Everything _was_ fine – no one caught them, they didn’t get lost once, they drove fast but within the speed limit, and at one point Lavinia even joined Kipp in his serenades. Aubrey has heard more ABBA songs than he feels comfortable with, but, on the whole, so far he’d count the trip a success.

“I like staying off the radar,” May sighs when they approach.

“You like December Graham more,” Kipp says with confidence the source of which Aubrey can’t even begin to guess at.

“I don’t like her,” May insists, blinking at him.

“No,” Kipp agrees with a smirk. “But you are fond of her, aren’t you?”

May’s fingers twitch, but her smile is steady. “How about you leave now?” she says sweetly.

“How about we don’t?” Lavinia snaps, shaking off her stupor. “Listen, lady, I haven’t driven all the way here risking my neck only for you to dismiss us like—”

“Like what?” May cuts in with exaggerated curiosity. “You look like someone who dismisses people all the time yourself.”

“I do dismiss people, sure,” Lavinia says, blowing a stray curl off her nose. “I don’t _get_ dismissed, though.”

“Well, here’s a first for you, then.”

“Listen here—”

“ _Please_ ,” Easy says. He shoves past Kipp and Lavinia and stops right in front of May. “Just, please.”

She looks at him. She looks and looks and _looks_ at him.

“You know what’s funny, Ezra?” she says after a minute, her eyes going soft. “Sometimes, kids with parents are orphans, too.”

Aubrey doesn’t know why a ‘please’ from Easy should be enough to make May throw caution to the wind, kiss the way she’s been living for years goodbye, and take off her bathrobe only to reveal that she’s already fully dressed underneath it, but, miraculously, it _is_.

“Shall I drive?” she asks, eyeing Lavinia with worry as the bathrobe pools at her feet.

“We forgot something,” Kipp sighs, folding December’s sunglasses and hooking them on the collar of his shirt. “There’s no spare seat.”

“I can sit in your lap,” Regina says. Lavinia stumbles over her own feet even though she hasn’t even been walking.

May clicks her tongue, slipping leather flats on. “Let’s not break any more laws today, shall we? I’m afraid one of you will simply have to stay here and wait.”

“I could use a break,” Lavinia sighs, handing the car keys over to May. “Do you have any wine?”

“In the cupboard over the sink, do help yourself,” May says with a blinding smile that only widens when Kipp raises an eyebrow at her. “What, she can drive you across three counties, but a little bit of wine is where you draw the line?”

“You’d be a terrible parent,” Kipp decides, shaking his head.

“Which is why I’m not one!” May says, clapping her hands together. “Shall we?”

“I’ll stay as well,” Regina says, a bit too loud, as she latches onto Lavinia’s sleeve. “I’ll stay as well,” she repeats, lowering her voice.

May smiles indulgently. “Very well. If you’d like, there’s some vodka over the sink, too.”

“We really ought to go,” Kipp reminds her, forgetting all civility and dragging her towards the car by the elbow, and so what that she has over a decade on him.

*

In the car, Aubrey thinks back to that newspaper article and to that picture – December Graham in a wide-brimmed hat, her husband’s hands around her waist as if to keep her from moving away.

What I really want is _The Beach at Fecamp_ , the quote said, and it charmed Aubrey when he was a kid, but he only understands it now: there’s boldness in it, the sea in the painting a shade of green that couldn’t ever be argued blue, the sky a promise of the kind of storm that has people hide under tables.

But December wouldn’t hide. She’d run to meet it head-on, and now here they are, doing it for her.

*

May parallel-parks after an hour of struggling through London traffic, and brings her knees to her chin instead of getting out of the car. They’re almost late, but it’s like she’s forgotten: she wraps her arms around her legs and rocks back and forth, staring straight ahead with unseeing eyes. 

Kipp clears his throat but Aubrey doesn’t even check the hour. He’s too busy watching May MacKinnon, the always-composed, never-serious aristocrat, act like a spooked animal.

“I hate her, I hate her, I hate her,” she hisses, teeth grinding. “Oh, I _hate_ her.”

“I think you love her,” Kipp tells her, tone mercilessly even. “Isn’t that why you’re here?”

If Aubrey was cruel, he’d ask him if that’s why Kipp is here himself.

If he was cruel _and_ stupid, since he already knows the answer.

“Oh, fine!” May says and collects herself, all swan neck, all chin up, all straight spine. She checks her lipstick in the rear-view mirror and then steps out of the car, smoothing the satin of her dress down. “Well! See you in a couple of hours!”

“ _Excuse_ me?” Easy says, fisting her sleeve before she can leave them there.

“Oh, but tell me you didn’t think they’d ever let kids like you inside?” May says with a sweet smile. Aubrey almost expects her to pat Easy on the head. “Do go for a walk, though! London, remember? It’s supposed to be _exciting_.”

She tugs her sleeve free of Easy’s grip as though she doesn’t care whether the fabric rips, and leaves them there, the momentary silence punctuated by the barely-audible tapping of her barely-there heels. They watch night swallow her up and then spit her back out as she appears in the pools of streetlamp light and walks towards a building that’s somehow both more and less magnificent than Aubrey expected.

“Fuck it,” Easy says, hands on hips. “Let’s spy through the window.”

Which is exactly what they end up doing. They have to round the building, climb over two fences, and shove their way through neatly-trimmed hedges first, but they manage to get close without getting arrested or bitten to death by guard dogs. In the end, Aubrey doesn’t even get to see a thing since the windows are too high for them, and Easy and Kipp are too busy arguing over who should climb onto his shoulders and watch the event first to think to offer him the same. He whiles away the time staring at that inscrutable London sky that, too bashful of the thousand-and-one-or-more city lights, won’t reveal its stars, and only learns of their success when Kipp lets out a loud whoop and falls off his back and into the bushes. He’s been relaying the fight for Monet to them like it was a sports game, all Lady Pearl Necklace in One Corner, all Mister Handlebar Moustapocalypse in Another, and when he mouths the price that May names to win their painting back, Easy’s eyes go moon-wide.

“I didn’t know it was _legal_ to have that much money.”

“Don’t think about it too much,” Aubrey advises, but knows better than to hope Easy will listen.

*

“Now we _all_ deserve wine,” Kipp says once they’ve left London behind. “Hopefully Lavinia hasn’t drunk it all.”

“This is no cause for celebration,” May reprimands, hands tightening on the wheel. “I’m screwed, and December— Well. Let’s just say it’s going to be one hell of a chain reaction.”

Aubrey’s never heard her talk like this – swear words out of May’s throat make him think of drinking cheap beer out of champagne glasses – and he doesn’t dare imagine what she might mean.

“Worry tomorrow, be happy today,” Kipp laughs. “She’ll be thankful, at least.”

“Thankful?” May snorts. “December wouldn’t know thankful if it climbed in her lap and fell asleep there.”

Speaking of sleeping: Easy’s head is lolling on Kipp’s shoulder, and Aubrey can’t help but wonder whether, all those times Easy fell asleep on top of him, it was because it was Aubrey, or simply because he was there.

When they arrive at May’s house, there’s no need to go inside. Regina and Lavinia are sitting out on the front steps, sharing the former’s scarf, close enough together that it’s looped twice around each of their necks. Aubrey stares at them – the picture of cosiness – and wonders if Lavinia hasn’t been wearing scarves because she won’t wear the one Regina made her, but can’t bear to wear a different one either.

“Well?” Regina says when May rolls down the window.

“I didn’t go all the way there to let someone else buy it, did I?” May says, allowing a pleased note into her voice for the first time since the auction. “Now, hop in. Looks like we’ve still got some law-breaking to do if I’m to drive you back.”

“My lap awaits,” Kipp calls out to Regina dramatically, but, to everybody’s surprise, it’s Lavinia who settles there, elbowing him in the stomach so many times that it must be on purpose.

“Oh, to be young again,” May says, shaking her head. “I hope you enjoy opera, ladies.”

“We’re halfway through _Tosca_ ,” Kipp explains. “It’s growing on us.”

“Like fungus,” Easy grumbles, jerking awake when Lavinia’s knee presses into his side. “Why people pay for something that sounds like dying cats in heat, I’ll never understand.”

“Either they’re dying, or they’re in heat,” May says, pulling off the driveway. “These imaginary cats of yours.”

“Well, if a cat’s in heat, and then you start strangling it, then—”

But the rest of his words is drowned out by _Già, mi dicon venal_.

*

“Actually, I’ve changed my mind,” May says once she parks outside the school gates. “It’s best if I don’t see her. Tell her I’ll bring the painting as soon as the paperwork’s all done.”

“But—”

“And I have a business in Bullford to take care of anyhow.”

“It’s almost ten,” Kipp reminds her.

“Yes, it’s terribly selfish to bother people this late, I realise, but there’s just no helping in. Now, not that I’m kicking you darlings out…”

Whatever ‘business’ she means, she drives off tight-lipped, like she’s heading off to war.

Later, they look for December to pass on the good news, but she’s nowhere to be found.

“Dying in a bathtub somewhere, whatever that means,” Jerusalem explains when they meet her in the common room. “Maybe she _is_ a werewolf.”

“Well, tonight she’s a happy one, even if she doesn’t know it yet,” Kipp says, stretching his arms over his head. “Jesus, but buying paintings is a hassle! Next time, we better steal one.”

“I’ll sooner eat my hat,” Quickly mumbles sleepily from where he’s been dozing off at Jerusalem’s feet.

Aubrey doesn’t know why, but a thought sneaks into his mind like a thief just then: a most innocent _bon appétit._

*

“What surprises me,” Treasure Little says once he’s finished telling her all about their impromptu adventure the very next day, “is that you – the law-abiding, exemplary student that you are – would go along with it.”

Aubrey smiles at their dangling feet and taps her shoe with his. “I’m up here with you every week, aren’t I? I don’t think it gets riskier than that.”

“That!” she exclaims, “I don’t get also. _Either_. Not at all.”

He explains his reasoning to Treasure for the same reason he explained everything else: he can trust her with his secrets both because she would never give them up, and because no one would ever think to ask her for them.

“To me, there’s something both irresistible and alien about the concept,” he says. “People wanting things and having the guts to reach for them.”

“Oh?”

“When I wanted to understand ancient Rome, I read _The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ ,” he smiles. “I wanted to understand this, too, and so I went along with it. Are you still surprised?”

“I am,” Treasure laughs, shaking her head. “I’m surprised you thought it’d be enough for you to understand.”

“It wasn’t,” Aubrey admits. “But, apparently, I have some hope in me yet.”

“An advice,” Treasure says, her smile already turning apologetic. “Build a fortress around that hope.”

“I already _have_.”

“Make it stronger.”

“But it’s already—”

“Shh,” she says, pressing her palm over his mouth. “Look.”

Down below, two silhouettes round the school’s corner, one walking backwards and dragging the other along by the hands. Aubrey recognises the scarf first: he’s been waiting for its reappearance and now there it is, wrapped around Lavinia Pye’s throat so carelessly that it must be there for comfort rather than warmth.

“Here,” Treasure says, dragging him away from the edge of the roof. “That’s private.”

“Hand-holding?”

“Not hand-holding, no.” She shakes her head at him like he’s the stupidest boy she’s ever known, which might just be true. “Love.”

*

When they tell December Graham, she laughs like a little girl, still pale from her ailment, and pours herself a celebratory glass of champagne. She brings it to her lips, but hesitates before taking a sip, and ends up pouring it over her head in glee instead.

She’s a madwoman, and a selfish thing, and the worst teacher Aubrey’s ever had, but, just then, even he can’t help laughing along.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can you tell i know nothing about how auctions work, I know you can


	5. epiphany, october 2001

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> what it says on the tin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is criminally short and im sorry but a book I need to read for tomorrow's class literally arrived by post today so....................................................... am dying   
> (at least it's a good book but oh boy, will I sleep tonight? we shall see) (can you believe that because of brexit I've been waiting for some packages for over a month now, me neither:'')) 
> 
> (btw, I do have a long-ish alfie thing planned so don't worry, there'll be more of him)

René Magritte, _Man in a Bowler Hat_

*

Speak low if you speak love

~William Shakespeare, _Much Ado About Nothing_

*

When Alfie opens the door, the last person he expects to see on the other side is May MacKinnon, but there she is all the same, smiling at him pleasantly, flats in hand and her feet bare on his doormat.

“May, hello,” he says, pulling on his collar. “I’m afraid you’ve caught me at a bad moment.”

“Why, is he naked?” May says, craning her neck to stare past his shoulder and into the flat.

“ _He_?”

May blinks, eyes flicking back to Alfie’s, and then smiles indulgently. “I mean no offense, Alfie, but do you really think I came here for you?”

Alfie sighs, slumping against the doorway. He knows when he’s lost. “Listen, it’s not what you think—”

“But you don’t know what I think, do you?” May says, pushing past him with such grace that it’s like she’d doing ballet instead of forcing her way into his flat. “Where is he, then?”

“I didn’t know you two— you’re December’s _friend_.”

This time, May’s smile is all pity. “So are you. Why should you get to see Yante, and not I?”

Inside Alfie’s mind, something ugly and selfish hatches at her words.

“He’s sleeping,” he tells her, trying to communicate that he’d like it to stay that way with the tone of his voice.

“I’m not,” Yante says, walking into the entrance hall in a rumpled jumper. Alfie’s rumpled jumper. “What’s — May.”

May’s smile widens into something sincere, and Alfie tries to ignore the instant pang of jealousy. It’s too childish a feeling, and not applicable besides: Alfie has seen May with other people, and it’s clear that whatever fondness she has for Yante is sisterly.

“Hello,” she says warmly. “I messed up.”

“Messed up how?” Yante says, coming close to free her of her coat.

May takes a deep breath, the kind a diver would take before a plunge. “I took a side.”

Yante goes still for a second and then hangs up the coat, hands lingering on the fabric.

“No way,” he ends up saying, lips quirking up into that crooked smile that Alfie has memorised better than Hamlet’s soliloquy by now. “You wouldn’t.”

“You’ll learn that I’m now a proud owner of one _Beach at Fecamp_.”

Alfie, who knows just how hard December took that loss, turns to stare at her.

“Oh yes, I _am_ that stupid,” May laughs, waving a hand at him. “Yante, whatever will I do?”

For a moment, they’re all helplessly quiet.

“How about some tea?” Alfie ends up offering, and, well, it doesn’t fix a thing, but it’s a start.

*

May sits like a small girl as she pours her heart out, knees beneath her chin and hands wrapped around the mug of steaming yerba mate that she insisted on despite Alfie’s warnings that she won’t sleep.

(I won’t sleep _any_ way, she said.)

“—And I just don’t know what to do, because won’t January be out to get me now? He doesn’t like being challenged like this, you _know_ he doesn’t, and the worst thing is, I didn’t even do it to challenge him at _all_! I only did it to make Dee— I only did it because December asked – well, not in person – and! And _actually_ , the worst thing is that I’m telling you all this like an absolute fool, when you’re loyal to him!”

Yante watches her with an unreadable expression, but the lack of his ever-present smirk is already telling.

“Oh, princess,” he sighs once May is done. “Do you really think I’d fuck up your life if he asked?”

May’s eyes fill with tears at his words, but she’s quick to wipe them away.

“She didn’t even call to say thank you,” she complains with a childish pout. “She’s waiting for me to come to her, and why is it that it’s always me who has to come to her?”

“It’s the Labrador in you,” Yante sighs. “How did you know to find me here anyway?”

“Berry,” May says with a small smile. “She’s a ninja, and knows all.”

“I wouldn’t say she’s a _ninja_ —”

“When we were teenagers,” May interrupts, turning to Alfie with a mischievous smile, “they would make a competition out of sneaking around, him and Berry. An eternal Grandmother’s Footsteps game. It’s how I learned that Yante is a sore loser.”

“Don’t listen to her,” Yante says, kicking her under the table without any subtlety whatsoever. “Now, May, won’t dear Benjamin protect you from whatever January could cook up?”

“Benny?” May says, arching an eyebrow. “Benny is no knight in shining armour.”

“Not for lack of trying, and he might not have a sword, but he certainly has a treasury.”

“That he does,” May agrees with a thoughtful nod. “Oh, the benefits of sham marriages.”

“I doubt you have as much cause for worry as you think,” Yante says, squinting at her, “but I’ll try to distract January if he does get… _upset_.”

“Well, he will, because—”

“May, he _knows_ you,” Yante cuts her off. He sounds almost apologetic, of all things. “You took a decade-long break, fine. Trust me, he hasn’t forgotten what you’re like when you take sides.”

Alfie actually feels bad for her when May stares at her feet, cheeks growing red.

“And there’s something you’re forgetting,” Yante continues, a light note stealing into his voice. “Benjamin might make a poor knight, but Berry is the best bodyguard anyone could hope for.”

May groans at his words, tipping her head back. “That she is, but oh, how she’ll hate me for having done this for Dee!”

“So she’ll grind her teeth a little,” Yante says, amused. “She took a break too, but I’m sure we both remember what _she_ ’s like when she takes sides.”

When she leaves, it’s Yante who locks the door behind her.

“Can’t believe I managed to calm her down without taking out that wine you keep under the bed.”

“It’s for emergencies,” Alfie says, trying not to sound too defensive.

“You mean for when you’re reading Plath and don’t want to get up?”

“It’s not my fault that Plath just goes with wine. Like cheese. Oh, imagine Plath with wine _and_ cheese—”

Yante distracts him from finishing the sentence with a kiss on Alfie’s cheek. It’s a first and so, when Yante disappears in the bedroom, Alfie doesn’t follow, surprised into stillness. He stands there for a moment, replaying the moment in his head to make sure that it’s really happened, and then cups his hand over the spot where the kiss landed, hoping to trap the tingling sensation he feels there.

It’s funny how you can have somebody’s mouth on every inch of your body, and yet it’s something this simple that ends up being your undoing.

Alfie closes his eyes and basks in it for a moment before he remembers all of their sins – how they’ve been… not _living_ together, but not _not_ -living together, either. How sometimes, there’ll be Yante’s shirts in Alfie’s wash. How Yante will reach for whatever book Alfie is reading when Alfie’s otherwise occupied only to argue with Alfie about it later. How after most dinners, there are two plates drying on the dish rack.

But never mind how it’s wrong of them. Never mind because—

When Alfie walks into the bedroom, Yante is staring out the window.

 _Do you even realise_ , Alfie wonders, _what you’ve done?_

“You love me,” he says, because there’s no point beating around the bush.

Yante doesn’t exactly jump, but something seems to wreck through him anyway.

“What was that?” he says, even though he _heard_.

“You _love_ me,” Alfie repeats, feeling ridiculous for believing it, feeling ridiculous for not having guessed it earlier. “It’s not just loneliness, or lust, or— we don’t even have sex all that often these days, do we? And it’s not another scheme, either, because _you love me_.”

Alfie expects Yante to laugh in his face, but his reflection in the window looks resigned instead. Alfie’s cheek throbs like someone has slapped it, and Yante doesn’t deny it. He doesn’t deny it.

“What do you expect will happen here, anyway?” Yante says, and he sounds tired but oh – he hasn’t been tired this past year. “This isn’t a happy ending.”

Alfie thinks that what this is, is a disaster. Balancing an egg on the tip of a knife would be easier.

Alfie thinks that what this is, is not an ending, but a dog-eared page somewhere in the middle of a book.

He crosses the room until he’s standing next to Yante, and draws the curtains. He presses his forehead to Yante’s shoulder, waiting to be shaken off, and, when that doesn’t happen, finds Yante’s pulse with his lips and tastes the silent admission that it beats out against his skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading <3


	6. braver, october 2001

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a most illuminating discussion about gardening

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, this is super short but just because Aubrey doesn't get an insight into how the whole L&R getting-together thing happened doesn't mean you don't! Whether you want it or not <3 
> 
> So this chapter features: 2 girls in love & 1 miserable himbo

Claude Monet, _The House Seen From the Rose Garden_

*

Time dripped from the faucet like a magician’s botched trick.  
I did not want to applaud it. I stood to one side & thought,  
What it’s time for is a garden.

~Chen Chen, _Summer Was Forever_

*

“With a house this big,” Lavinia says once they’re inside and alone, “they can’t possibly love each other.”

Lavinia, braver than Regina ever thought her to be, and—

She’s been thinking, and what she’s thought up is this: Lavinia, brave enough to drive them all the way here. Lavinia, brave enough that, had she something to tell, would simply tell it.

Therefore, nothing to tell. Therefore,

“They?”

“Though I suppose people come to hate each other in flats, too,” Lavinia goes on, walking through the spacious kitchen. “What’s best is a modest, not-too-big, not-too-small house.”

,she says as though there is a recipe for love, as though, just like you can’t overdo it with salt when cooking soup, you can’t overdo it with space if you don’t want to botch affection.

The living room, when they find it, is all light.

“Matisse,” Regina says upon spotting the only painting in it, surprised. “ _Woman with a Red Umbrella, Seated in Profile._ ”

“Oh?” Lavinia says, cocking her head at it. “How the hell do you know?”

“Because I’ve seen it,” Regina says, still surprised. “It was in Kipp’s book. He had it open on page— Well, whatever page this was on.”

“Hm,” Lavinia hums, now cocking her head to the other side. “Doesn’t it remind you of December Graham?”

“Not particularly, no,” Regina lies. She doesn’t need Lavinia knowing that Kipp likes his paintings with hat-donning women in them.

“It sure does to _me_.”

“That thing you said about houses,” Regina says to distract her. “I don’t agree with you, like, at all.”

“Like, at all?” Lavinia mocks, with just enough fondness in her voice to take the sting out of it.

“I think people can be happy in spacious houses if all the rooms are filled, and I think people can be happy in flats if they compromise.”

“You mean that you believe in love against all odds.”

“I mean that I believe in love as gardening,” Regina says, trailing her finger along the edge of the piano positioned in the middle of the room. “There are always things to tend to, and things to weed out, and, sometimes, there’s plain bad luck, which doesn’t mean having a garden isn’t worth the effort.”

Lavinia stares at her. “How…”

Regina smiles, hoping it looks self-aware. “Naïve? Idealistic? Silly?”

“Nice,” Lavinia says. “How _nice_.”

She comes closer and rolls her sleeves up. Regina watches, but still almost misses it when Lavinia presses the first piano key.

What she meant about love is this: now, she can’t imagine anything lovelier than Lavinia rolling up her sleeves to play – oh really? _Frère Jacques_? – even though they’re not long enough for it to be necessary, but, if she ever got lucky enough to have Lavinia close for always, she _can_ imagine coming to find the habit irritating after years of arguments and resentments. People grow so tired of each other and so, what she meant about love is _this_ :

It’s damn hard work.

So it’s a shame that Lavinia is brave, because her being brave means that, had she something to tell, she’d simply tell it.

So it’s a shame because she must have nothing to tell, and yet, whatever they don’t have, the two of them, is the one garden Regina would most like to get tired working on.

(It came to her a few weeks ago, and it came to her like this: she went to the school library, climbed a shelf when no one was looking, and grabbed the copy of _Master and Margarita_ she’d seen Lavinia with so many times. She started reading it, and she kept thinking, _hey, wow, Lavinia has read this_ like it was something extraordinary, when it shouldn’t have been, because hadn’t thousands, no, _millions_ , of people read it?

But it _was_ extraordinary, and if it wasn’t, then it simply meant that, at least to her, _Lavinia_ was.)

“Are you crying?” Lavinia says with wonder once she’s done playing. “It’s just _Frère Jacques_.”

There is a garden outside the living room windows: a well-loved, well-kept one, and who would have thought when May MacKinnon doesn’t have a gardener’s hands?

“It does remind me of December Graham,” she admits, pointing to the painting, because it’s a relief of a sort: talking about something that may or may not be a sign of love, a roundabout admission in its own right, a way to confess without the recipient ever becoming aware of it.

Lavinia’s smart, but she’s not _that_ smart.

Only the way she’s staring at Regina, the way her eyes widen—

“And who might you be?” a male voice says from the doorway, and they jump apart, even though they weren’t even _close_. “You don’t look like burglars.”

He’s tall, lean but broad-shouldered, blond, white-teethed. Perfect. He could be in so many commercials except – another proof of perfection – for all that, he doesn’t look like he’d stand out in a crowd.

“Are _you_ a burglar?” Lavinia says, arching an eyebrow at him in that condescending way of hers.

“I’m actually the owner,” the man says with a polite, almost sheepish, smile.

“The owner of…?”

“Why, the house! The house and whatever it is you’re trying to steal. You can have it, too, if it’s something like a fancy candelabrum, but I do hope you’re not here for the Matisse… My wife is quite fond of it, so I’d be in a real pickle.”

 _Real pickle_ , Regina mouths, amused.

“You look too much like her to be her _husband_ ,” Lavinia protests. “Or is that why you don’t have children? Because it’d be inbreeding?”

The man’s smile widens, but it loses some of its warmth. Even so, it’s still possibly the warmest Regina has ever seen. “So you know May, then?”

“Not as well as you do, but sure,” Lavinia says, openly sizing him up. “Well enough to know she never mentions you.”

He tries to hide it, but Regina sees that the words hurt him anyway. 

“Actually, we don’t know her well enough to know that,” she says hurriedly. “We’re so very sorry for intruding—”

“Oh, don’t be!” he laughs. “Mi casa es— Ah, but May doesn’t like when I say that to people. I mean, as long as you’re really not here to steal the Matisse… I’m Benjamin.”

Lavinia tilts her head at him. “You look it.”

“Well, may I just, if you’d just— wh-y are you here?”

He must be thirty at least, but blushes like a schoolboy of no more than twelve.

“The car wouldn’t fit six,” Lavinia explains with a shrug. “Your wife – whom, I admit, we don’t know that well – is off buying a painting tonight.”

Just like that, the warm smile is gone.

“May is what?” he demands, even though Regina expected something more in the line of ‘beg your pardon?’.

“Something one Malcolm Graham wanted to get rid of,” Lavinia says slowly, wary now that she’s actually upset him. “A—”

“Monet,” he interrupts, hand scratching at the back of his neck. “Christ, May.”

For a moment, they watch his quiet, upper-class agitation in silence.

“Wine?” Lavinia says eventually. “I hear there’s some in the cupboard.”

He glances at her distractedly. “Wine? Oh, no, thank you… No, I’m… I’m actually meeting someone in…” – a quick look at his watch – “Oh, boy.”

“Meeting someone? At this hour?” Lavinia says, all scandalised. “What, are you having an affair?”

This time, his smile is wry. “Not at all. It’s actually the opposite.”

He leaves without saying goodbye and they listen to the distant sound of tires on gravel even though they missed it before.

“What the hell is the opposite of an affair?” Lavinia says after a while.

Regina turns her back to the Matisse, determined not to glance at it again, not even once. “I’m starting to think that whatever December Graham’s mixed up in, it’s a right mess.”

Lavinia gives her an appraising look and then extends a shaking hand. “Want me to teach you _Frère Jacques_? Only don’t cry this time.”

“It wasn’t _Frère Jacques_ that made me cry.”

That look of sharp awareness is back in Lavinia’s eyes, and maybe Regina got it wrong. Driving them all the way here _was_ brave but maybe saying that thing Regina’s been wanting to hear is braver.

She’s been so _impatient_.

“I can’t call you by your last name anymore because you’re not a stranger, not at all,” Lavinia ends up saying, hand still extended, still shaking. “I’ll only say this once. so listen carefully, Reggie: I want to have a garden with you.”

Hand still extended, still shaking, and it’s an honour to take it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading !! <3


	7. the limitations of statistics, november-december 2001

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a change of plans, an impromptu coming-out, and some more discussions about Hitler 
> 
> (alternately, the one where they keep finishing each other's sentences)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All right, a warning for this chapter: there's a brief discussion of racism in it.
> 
> Anyway, this sure is idyllic......... it won't last, I'm sorry :')

Franz Marc, _Dreaming Horse_

*

So, this boy is a horse galloping

towards you, so much bark, forest in his throat—

you can’t hold your breath. This is

is how we wound.

~Karese Burrows, _Little Beast_

*

“That’s the last book that mentions the painting at all,” Aubrey says, dropping it on the library table. (Fine, placing it there gently.) “I’ve gone through the bibliographies and made a list of some that we could use. Do you think December Graham would have Alfie order them if we asked? I think she would.”

Easy blinks – awake? – was he sleeping? – and frowns at the book before poking it with a finger.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“ _The Tower of Blue Horses_ , of course,” Aubrey says. “What else?”

“Der tum… no, der Turm der… der turm der blauen…?”

“Yes, yes, very good, _Der Turm der blauen Pferde_ ,” Aubrey says, dragging a chair over and sitting down opposite Easy. “Actually.”

“Actually?” Easy repeats, glaring at him from under eyelashes that, now he’s fifteen, have no right being that long. “I don’t like that word.”

“I meant to say that, actually, we could probably benefit from learning German,” Aubrey goes on. If he’s learned anything over the years, it’s that Easy’s complaining is just that: complaining. “It makes sense that the Germans would have written more on the painting and on Marc in general, what with him being—”

“German, yes, we’ve already had the conversation about you stating obvious things,” Easy groans. “I am _not_ learning German.”

Aubrey shrugs. “I meant to work on getting fluent in Latin first but—”

“ _We_ are not learning German.”

“No, we are,” Aubrey insists. “Listen, nobody said this was going to be—”

“Easy, yes, but—”

“Am I really that—?”

“Predictable? Well, it—”

“Depends?”

Which is when they blink at each other and break out into smiles.

“Fine,” Easy concedes with a long-suffering sigh. “Let’s learn German but after _Caesar_.”

“So, a New Year’s resolution?”

“If you will,” Easy says, then scowls like he’s bitten a lemon. “Oh Christ, that’s such a _you_ thing to say.”

“Is it? I think it’s also a December Graham thing to say.”

“So, snobby.”

“ _I_ ’m not snobby.”

Across the table, Easy squints and cocks his head. “You are, sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“You’re like the ugly duckling of the snobby ducks,” Easy says, propping his chin on his hand. “Not that you’re actually ugly.”

Aubrey laughs. “I don’t mind.”

“I don’t care if you mind, you’re just not,” Easy insists with a dramatic eye-roll. “Anyway, what I mean is, you’re literally wearing Oxford shoes.”

“They’re the suggested uniform—”

“Footwear, yes, yes, but you came here already wearing Oxford shoes, too,” Easy points out. “You were _thirteen_.”

Aubrey doesn’t really remember what he was wearing when they met but he does remember Easy’s holey jumper.

“Well, when we don’t have any guests over at home, we only have two-course meals for dinner.”

Easy stares at him, wide-eyed. “ _That_ ’s your defence? Christ, but you’ll make a terrible lawyer.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I am,” Easy says with a wicked grin. “If I ever land in court, you should be the prosecutor. That’ll save me.”

“ _Anyway_.”

“German in January, yes, sure,” Easy says, blowing a stray curl off his nose. Aubrey stares and waits and – oh, there – watches it come back down. “Just so you know, this has nothing to do with Hitler.”

Aubrey stares, confused.

“I mean,” Easy says, waving his hand around. “It’s not some sort of a ‘I don’t want to learn German because Hitler was evil and my parents had to emigrate and now I’m an orphan, boohoo’ thing. I just think that German is a fucking ugly language, is all.”

“Do you really?” Aubrey says, taken aback. “I don’t. _Die Dinge, die ich weither mit mir nahm…_ aaand I don’t remember the rest. It goes like this in English: _The things I brought back with me / seem strange here and out of place. / In their own land they moved like animals, / but here they hold their breath in shame._ ”

“Let me guess, Rilke?”

“Rilke,” Aubrey confirms sheepishly, then almost gasps.

“What now?” Easy says, arching an eyebrow at him. “Oh, no, don’t tell me it’s just hit you that if you learn German you’ll be able to—”

“Read _Rilke_ in German, yes,” Aubrey confirms triumphantly.

Easy, chin still propped on his fist, looks almost fond. His voice is gentle when he says, “You so are a snob.”

*

He and Quickly are getting ready for dinner when Aubrey notices.

“Are those _my_ socks?”

Quickly goes still, shoe half-on, and then smiles.

“Easy’s stolen most of my pairs,” he explains with a shrug. “I have to wear _something_.”

Aubrey stares at him blankly, taken aback. He’s gotten used to December Graham and Lavinia – mostly Lavinia – getting Easy clothes that actually fit and don’t look like someone’s been practising shooting with them for the target, but he supposes this makes sense: Easy never asks for their help, and while they’re bound to notice threadbare shirts, socks are easy to miss.

Still, “he’s doing that again?”

“He never stopped,” Quickly laughs. “Regina can only knit so many, and anyway, he’s not going to wear thick woollen socks with school shoes, is he? The thing is, I really don’t mind.”

Aubrey settles next to Quickly on his bed. Dinner can wait.

“You don’t?”

Quickly shrugs. “Back home, it’s like we live in a hotel. Everything has its place and you can’t touch others’ things or even enter their rooms, like we’re all guests in the same building where each door locks. Jerry says it’s very _Bluebeard’s Wife_ , but I don’t know that it is: it’s not about terrible secrets, it’s just…”

“Coldness,” Aubrey nods. “Distance.”

“I knew you’d get it,” Quickly says with a sad smile. “My grandfather, he was a disruption to my parents’ order every time he visited.”

“Was he?”

“My mum kept saying ‘Dad’ in that terrible tone— It’d only make him laugh. There were few things that _wouldn’t_ make him laugh.”

Aubrey doesn’t dare – hasn’t ever dared – ask about that story Quickly stuttered out once, two-sentences long: how his grandfather drowned, his newsboy cap caught on a branch as if to mark the spot.

“I want an orchard one day,” Quickly says, leaning back against the wall and closing his eyes with a soft smile. “The kind where a bruised apple is all the more delicious for it.”

“I hope you’ll have it.”

Quickly cracks one eye open, his smile widening. “I’m going to be a doctor, is what I’ve decided.”

“Have you? Listen, this is a little anticlimactic, but I knew you would. I’ve known for years now.”

“I’ve known for years too,” Quickly laughs. “I just didn’t want to say it aloud.”

“How come?”

“It’s not really about the wounds, and germs, and all that. Well, partly, sure. But mostly, it’s the responsibility.”

“Ah.”

“Someone will die on me someday, and then what?”

“And then lots of someones _won’t_ die thanks to you,” Aubrey says carefully. “Besides, who says you have to be a surgeon?”

“I do have to,” Quickly says, bending down to slip his shoes the rest of the way on. “It’s childish, but I have this vendetta against death, you see.”

He doesn’t have to explain. Aubrey hears it loud and clear: _She took one of mine, I’ll take some of hers._

Later, as they walk down to dinner, Aubrey rearranges the cluttered space in his head until Jerusalem is no longer the one he thinks of as his bravest friend.

*

There’s a tree out on the grounds that Aubrey particularly likes, and that’s where Jonathan finds him the first week of December.

It hasn’t rained or snowed in the last few weeks, and Aubrey decided to enjoy the last of firm ground before it all turns to grey sludge again. The reason he and Easy can’t start learning German before January is that, recently, everything has been rehearsals, and rehearsals, and rehearsals, so Aubrey was really looking forward to this salvaged half an hour he decided to devoid to Zweig’s _The Post-Office Girl._

But alas.

Jonathan Small, their tormentor, their Caesar, towers over him ominously and clears his throat.

“Are you here to beat me up?” Aubrey asks because there’s no point beating around the bush. “I do have the authority to take away your role, you know.”

Jonathan looks sheepish, of all things. “Yeah, about that…”

*

“He _what_?” Jerusalem screeches half an hour later as Aubrey hides his face in his hands in front of the common room fire.

“His father wants him home for that one weekend, so he’ll meet ‘important people’,” Aubrey repeats slowly. “He’s not going to be here to play Caesar.”

“That can’t be legal,” Quickly says with a frown. “Is that legal?”

“He wanted the role for his university applications,” Kipp says with a shrug. “Most of his interviews are before the show, so I guess he doesn’t care anymore.”

“Well, there’s no point getting upset,” Regina says reasonably. “We better focus on finding a solution.”

Regina, who, recently, has been disturbingly happy. It’s been weeks, but Aubrey still hasn’t gotten used to it: how she seems to have a smile on her face all the time now, and not just when there’s something to smile about. She wasn’t exactly miserable before but happy— Aubrey can tell she wasn’t happy either, by virtue of contrast.

“There _is_ no solution,” Aubrey sighs. “The play is in two weeks.”

“Two weeks is not that bad, actually,” Kipp points out. “We just have to find a new Caesar, that’s… doable.”

Which is when Bessie Lawrence clears her throat, reminding them all of her presence.

“About that.”

“You want to play Caesar?” Aubrey says, a tad too eagerly.

“She can’t,” Quickly reminds him. “She’s a third-year.”

“Oh, I think they’ll make an exception,” Bessie says, unimpressed. “But no. I don’t want to play _Caesar_.”

Aubrey sighs and leans forward in his armchair, pressing his hands together, the tips of his fingers under his chin. “Explain.”

Bessie takes a deep breath and does. “You won’t get anyone to learn lines now, two weeks before the end of term. Me, I know the lines, but not _Caesar_ ’s lines. I know all of Cassius’s because Easy’s been practicing with me.”

“But we have a Cassius,” Kipp reminds her gently. “We don’t have a Caesar.”

“I mean that I should be Cassius, and Easy should be Caesar since _he_ does know most of his lines.”

Easy glares at her and it’s such a _et tu, Brute?_ moment that all protests die on Aubrey’s tongue. Which is fine, because Easy himself has plenty.

“No, no, no, no way, I, Caesar? I’m too short, and too Jewish, and too— I don’t know, too _everything._ I could never pull off Caesar, what even, _you_ do it.”

“But _I_ don’t know the lines,” Bessie reminds him. “And do you really think I’d make a better Caesar, being a girl and all?”

“Sure you would,” Easy argues. “It’d be a bold casting choice.”

“Yeah, especially the bit where over twenty fake swords would be stuck in the only black person on stage,” she points out wryly.

“You… don’t care about that,” Easy says slowly, squinting at her. “I know you don’t. Jesus, but you’d make a good—”

“Lawyer?” Aubrey interrupts with a smile. “I say we listen to Bessie.”

“See? _He_ agrees!” Bessie says, pointing a finger at Aubrey. “And while we’re at it, I deserve to play Cassius. I wanted to be in _Midsummer_ with the other third-years, but the guy who’s directing it said that I was too…”

“Let me guess,” Kipp snorts. “Too black?”

“He actually said ‘exotic’” Bessie says, shaking her head. “And that, when the play has fairies in it, and I’m originally from Yorkshire.”

“Excuse me!” Easy cries from the carpet, where he’s sprawled out with his limbs akimbo. “Does anyone care about my opinion at all?”

“No!”

“Not really, no.”

“Not a bit.”

“Nope.”

“Nay.”

“I am sorry, for what it’s worth.”

Easy sighs, closing his eyes. “The fake blood better wash out, then.”

*

“So you’ve made these decisions without consulting me,” Teddy says later, his eyebrows meeting in the middle in an angry frown.

“You’re no longer a student here,” Aubrey points out.

“So you didn’t even ask for my advice.”

“Again, you’re no longer a student here.”

“So you didn’t even think to—”

“Listen,” Bessie interrupts, palm up to stop Teddy from further complaints. “There’s a possibility that I’ll be your sister-in-law in the future, so you better think carefully about what you’re implying here about our choices.”

And that, finally, shuts Teddy right up.

*

“So,” Kipp says, joining Aubrey by their dining room table. Aubrey already dreads whatever will come next: Kipp’s thoughtful smile doesn’t bode well.

“Yes?”

It’s breakfast, and Aubrey isn’t used to seeing Kipp this early. Usually, when he heads down, Kipp is only waking, still buried under his covers and sleepily mumbling about chocolate.

“Regina and Lavinia,” Kipp says.

“I take it we’re not communicating in full sentences today, then?” Aubrey says, wry. “What about them?”

“You have noticed the recent development, haven’t you?” Kipp demands, eyeing Aubrey doubtfully.

“Sure.”

“Was it… unexpected?”

“To an extent,” Aubrey admits, unsure where Kipp’s going with this.

“Because heterosexuality is the default,” Kipp goes on.

“Mhm.”

“So it surprised you. The recent development.”

“Well, yes, but statistically…”

“Statistically someone had to be gay?” Kipp guesses with an almost pitying smile. “So I guess now Regina and Lavinia are together, you consider that checked off the list.”

“What list?” Aubrey says, slowly growing impatient. “There’s no list.”

“I mean, _statistically_ , the rest of us must be straight, right?”

“All right, ‘statistically’ was a stupid way to put it,” Aubrey concedes. “What’s all this about? Is _that_ one of your trinity of secrets?”

Kipp tilts his head back and laugh. “Oh, no! No, not at all. That’s no secret! I’m very… Oh, I mean, there’s something to appreciate in everybody, isn’t there? If a certain someone wasn’t already living in my heart, to put it dramatically – now, don’t make that face, I know that you do like the occasional dramatism, what with being such an avid fan of the bard himself – _if_ a certain someone wasn’t already living in my heart, I imagine I wouldn’t be at all discriminating in who to rent it to.”

“I don’t think ‘discriminating’ is fair.”

“I’m trying to say I like both,” Kipp sighs. “But that is _so_ beside the point.”

“You only ever… _flirt_ … with girls.”

“Well, it’s best not to— I don’t mean it anyway, so what’s the point of tempting fate? I don’t need Jonathan Small breaking my nose, thank you very much.”

“All right,” Aubrey says, giving up. “So what _is_ the point?”

“The point is that – Do you think everyone else is straight?”

Whatever Kipp means by ‘everyone else’, Aubrey doesn’t know. Their friends? Their year? The whole school?

“Believe it or not, I don’t go around thinking about these things.”

“No, you wouldn’t, would you?” Kipp sighs, chin in hand. “And they all think you’re so polite, too.”

“In my defence, you don’t really inspire politeness.”

“Yes,” Kipp says with a lazy grin. “I like to think it’s one of my best qualities.”

*

“Let’s discuss Hitler for a moment,” Aubrey says, joining Easy by his library table.

Easy groans. “Again?”

Aubrey smiles apologetically. “The _Führermuseum._ ”

“Why should we discuss _that_? He didn’t even get to build it, so…”

“Yes, but the concept itself,” Aubrey says, dragging his chair closer to the table, until their knees knock together under it. “The idea that he would have it where he wanted it, and that what he wouldn’t buy for it, he’d steal.”

“The Amber Room?” Easy sighs.

“For instance,” Aubrey nods. “It’s just— A dream museum, full of artworks he would have, or else.”

Easy gives him an assessing look, and then leans back in his chair, staring at him in exaggerated disbelief. “Tell me you haven’t just implied that December Graham is like Hitler.”

“I— _No._ ”

“Then where are you going with this?”

Aubrey thinks about it, thinks about Hitler’s plans for Linz, how it’d be more beautiful than Vienna, more beautiful than Budapest, more beautiful than he could imagine, even though he must have spent years imagining.

“All right, so the Amber Room,” Aubrey says, drumming his fingers on the table. “It went missing, and that’s bad, but it went missing when the Nazis had it, so…”

“Went missing or was destroyed by bombs, you’re right, that’s actually great news,” Easy says with a bitter smile. “I don’t think Hitler wanted _The Tower of Blue Horses_ in Linz, or, for that matter, anywhere near it.”

“Well, maybe not, but the Nazis did have it.”

“Are you trying to say that maybe it being lost is a good thing, as long as it gets found?”

“Not… exactly,” Aubrey sighs. “But in a roundabout way, that is close to what I _am_ saying.”

Easy blinks at him in surprise, and then bursts out laughing.

“Oh my God! You actually thought this would make me feel better, didn’t you?”

Aubrey can feel himself go red.

“It doesn’t, but I do appreciate the… thought,” Easy says, shaking his head. “Think about all the people who died without seeing it, though.”

“…Yes.”

“And it could have been destroyed too.”

“…Yes.”

“But they did include it in that _Degenerate Art_ exhibition for a time…”

“Yes!”

“All right, all right, I see your point,” Easy sighs. “I’m not sure I buy this philosophy that all is good as long as the painting is found but…”

“But you want it found,” Aubrey finishes for him.

“But I want it found,” Easy concurs. “ _our wishes—did we have so many_?” he adds somewhat mockingly, and Aubrey holds his breath because he knows his Rilke.

_Do you still remember: falling stars,_

_how they leapt slantwise through the sky_

_like horses over suddenly held-out hurdles_

_of our wishes—did we have so many?—_

_for stars, innumerable, leapt everywhere;_

_almost every gaze upward became_

_wedded to the swift hazard of their play,_

_and our heart felt like a single thing_

_beneath that vast disintegration of their brilliance—_

_and was whole, as if it would survive them!_

“Oh, enough,” Easy says, rolling his eyes at Aubrey’s expression. “January, remember? And till then, _God_ , but I _hate_ how Caesar speaks of himself in third person, the pompous prick, no wonder they all ganged up to _kill_ the old bastard…”

Aubrey laughs, and laughs, and laughs until the afternoon’s all laughed away, and then laughs some more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm lazy so Aubrey's reading The Post-Office Girl because I'm reading The Post-Office Girl, but, also, he totally would read The Post-Office Girl, which I so recommend!
> 
> The Rilke poems are "The Loner" and an untitled one so I suppose [Do you still remember: falling stars], and when I think about the Degenerate Art exhibition, I don't know if I should laugh or cry 
> 
> Anyway, thank you for reading!! <3


	8. inventory, october 2001

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is really short and it should have been posted before the previous chapter but I figured it would have been too many non-Aubrey chapters in a row, so we go back a month in this 
> 
> anyway, the next chapter might take me a bit longer but that's because I want to post another one a day or two later, and they will both be quite lengthy

Ida Rentoul Outhwaite, _Pierrot and Fairy_

*

If it’s true that secrets resist

always the act of telling, how come secrets, more often than

not, seem the entire story?

~Carl Phillips, _Stray_

*

They’re having coffee for the nth time, and he’s falling apart across a table that should be a lot bigger than it is.

“I mean, what was she _thinking_?” he rails, fingers in his hair. In his hair, which is fine like silk, and why should it be so fine? “I mean, why would she just go and _do_ that?”

“I did tell you she was in danger,” Florence points out. “This doesn’t really change anything.”

“Doesn’t it?” he says, looking up at her with the eyes that are so—

Christ, if only everyone could get away with being this expressive.

“There’s something very interesting about hate,” Florence says because he’s polite enough (what with his eternal determination to _listen_ ) that a change of topic might just work here. “May hates us all for how we left her stranded and for how she had to marry you to get by, but you’re very good to her, aren’t you? So that bitterness of hers… it has little to do with suffering we contributed to by not trusting her since she’s hardly suffering. That bitterness is still all about how we didn’t trust her in the first place, consequences or the lack thereof notwithstanding.”

“So what you’re saying is that there’s nothing objective about hatred?”

She smiles. “Precisely. You might do all sorts of awful things to someone, and they’ll go on loving you like a beaten dog, and then you might not do any real harm and have someone hate you with a passion just because they’ve decided to.”

“I do appreciate the change of topic, but I’m not sure this is helping,” he says with an apologetic smile, and oh, not so stupid after all, Benjamin MacKinnon.

“Well, there’s actually a connection to your problem here,” she says, then pauses to take a sip of her coffee. She’s on her second cup now. “In the end, people will do what they’ll do. There’s no point getting upset over illogical things, is there? If someone can love you despite having no reason to, they can buy a painting despite having all the reason not to, and it won’t do to torture yourself about it.”

“How very… _Meditations_.”

“Is it?” she laughs. “Is that your favourite book?”

“Oh, no. It’s just a book I’ve read. _And_ disliked, too,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. “My favourite book would be _Anne of Green Gables_.”

She almost chokes on her coffee. Almost, because Christ, she’s supposed to be a professional.

“No way.”

“Yes way,” he says, nodding enthusiastically. “My favourite bit is when she dyes her hair green, or maybe when Gilbert calls her a carrot and she breaks that slate on his head.”

What she likes most about Benjamin MacKinnon is the innocence: how the success of this whole convoluted business with her pretending that she’s going behind January’s back and not actually seducing him hinges on him finding it credible that someone would task her with seducing him in the first place, her, who’s plain, and reserved, and, well, in a chair.

What she hates most about Benjamin MacKinnon is also the innocence: the innocence that is a privilege because just look at him, soft hands, bright eyes, and wasn’t he born with a silver spoon in his mouth? A teeny-tiny silver spoon, the kind that wouldn’t hurt his teeny-tiny tonsils, tonsils that would never have to grow accustomed to too-rough-bread or too-hard-bread or no-bread.

“For what it’s worth,” she says softly, “I genuinely believe that if May could love you, she would.”

“Well, thank you,” he says, bashful, and bashfulness is a privilege too: it means that you still have dignity left. “But about that Monet—”

“January likes to circle,” she interrupts. “I’m still supposed to be doing the circling for him.”

“So what you’re saying is that you’re a good ally to have?”

“A good ally?” she smiles. “I’m the best one.”

He still hasn’t been to Florence but he will talk about it sometimes: he’ll tell her about Galileo’s finger trapped inside a small glass egg (“Don’t you think Galileo would laugh if he knew? I didn’t know the lad, er, _obviously_ , but don’t you just think he’d laugh?”), and he’ll tell her about the _Il Porcellino_ replica’s snout, rubbed shiny by tourists who put coins between the animal’s jaws in the hope it’ll bring them good fortune (“though I suppose those who already consider themselves fortunate – now, why laugh? I’m sure some people _do_ – will give it a rub as well.”), and he’ll tell her about the Gipsoteca Bartolini with its Machiavelli busts (she means it as a joke when she asks him if she could go there, what with the wheelchair, but he reddens, and, the next time they meet, he’s actually called The Galleria dell'Accademia di Firenze and asked, as if her going there is an actual possibility.).

She’s not sure what to do with it all. She’s guessing that he’s doing it to make up for how he had trouble learning not to call her ‘April’ but she’s too wary to appreciate it. The way he speaks to her about Florence, it’s like instead of her being named after it, it’s the city that was named after her.

“Tell me about those infamous ‘others’” he pleads this time, and she makes a show of pretending to glance around.

“Not here,” she whispers – this, also for show – and what now?

It’s pretty hard, being Scheherazade, when the man you’re telling stories to wants to keep his wife alive rather than have her dead by sunrise.

Later, he pushes the chair down a park alley for her, and she tries to think of a safe middle between what she wants to tell him, what January would want her to tell him, and what she knows he’d like to hear. The end result is censored, but mostly true.

“February?” he asks, and she shakes her head.

“I know nothing about February,” she admits. “January keeps their identity a secret.”

“March?”

“March,” she laughs. “March is _so_ rich now. She’s married, but I hear she always has three lovers at a time.”

“Three at a time?” he repeats, incredulous. “Whatever for?”

“No clue,” she shrugs. “Then, me.”

“Then, you.”

“Then May.”

He hums, and it really shouldn’t sound so sad. “June?”

“Ah.” She takes a moment to collect her thoughts. June, the name that ought not to be spoken. “We don’t mention June or July ever.”

“Oh? How so?”

“They’re, to put it dramatically, traitors. Deserters? Long gone and living happily-ever-after or not elsewhere,” she explains, and oh, no, away with the nostalgia. “They were – are – were? – _are_ twins.”

“Isn’t May a deserter?” he asks carefully.

“That’s different. There are still strings that will make May twitch like a puppet if January pulls one. June and July, they managed to sever all their strings.”

He goes quiet and she hears it in his silence, how he doesn’t like the puppet analogy one bit.

“August,” she goes on. “He’s harmful but harm _less_ where May is concerned. He’s… fond of her. Not the kind of fond you’re thinking about, mind you, but fond nonetheless.”

“Is fond really so good when it comes to you people?”

“Good point!” she laughs, hurrying on to avoid having to answer. “September… A fun one. What is it Berry used to say… You could steal horses with her? A Polish saying, if I remember correctly. And speaking of Berry – that’s October – she’s even more fun. A bit of a nomad, she had her heart broken and sold it to the devil, etc, etc.. A lone wolf, except—”

“Except?”

“Oh, but you best not know _that_. Well, November.”

“Yes?”

“November is another one that only January actually knows.”

“I see. And finally—”

“December. Dee. _Gone away is the bluebird, here to stay, is the new bird_ …”

“You won’t tell me more, will you?”

She smiles apologetically over her shoulder and has him tell her about Sala delle Carte Geografiche because here’s another difference: he doesn’t want anyone dead by sunrise, and he has some stories to tell himself. __  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the polish saying about stealing horses is apparently also a german saying but I have 0 idea where it was in use first so.................. (probably not in Poland, we do like to borrow stuff from other countries (unless it's respecting democracy! that we apparently don't like so much :''')) 
> 
> Also............................ there might be some plans.......................... for a loosely related story about the they-who-cannot-be-named twins...................... something about seducing a rich kid in order to steal a valuable painting and accidentally falling for him instead..................... so, you know, once this behemoth of a story is over, probably it still won't be over :')
> 
> Thank you for reading <3


	9. the three ghosts of christmas, december 2001

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> wherein aubrey meets the ghost of christmas past, the ghost of christmas present, and the ghost of christmas future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few things before this chapter: 
> 
> *a super important character is introduced. he'll disappear for a while after this, but remember him.  
> *St. Nectan's is this AU-but-not-exactly-AU-England's Eton-equivalent, yes.  
> *this chapter's painting is not actually a painting, but a sculpture!  
> *I did mean that thing about over-the-top Shakespeare foreshadowing but that does not mean that Easy will actually bleed out after being stabbed 23 times in this story, I promise  
> *I might have a holy trinity of favourite Shakespeare plays and Julius Caesar might be one of them just because the language is so damn pretty (and I also might be a very predictable and basic fan because that holy trinity might also include Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, but it's okay, my hipster days are over, I can admit own up to that)  
> *in case, like me, you weren't aware of the fact: bbc has this 4-episodes ShakespeaRE-told series (it's all on youtube) and in their version of Macbeth, Macbeth, played by James McAvoy, is a chef, and the three witches are actually three binmen who say things like 'twinkle twinkle little star how I wonder what yous are', and the big prophecy is that he's going to have 3 Michelin stars. so, you know, if you want to suspend your disbelief and accept this weird universe where a UK restaurant could ever get 3 Michelin stars (just joking in case you're from the UK!!! <3) I 100% recommend it. It's very funny but it's also kind of genuinely tragic?? (Macbeth and Lady Macbeth washing blood off their hands together might have forever changed the way I think of romance, for one :'''))  
> *and finally: this weekend is shit, and please, please don't hate me? :''')

Girolamo Piccoli, _Boy with Goose_

*

These growing feathers pluck'd from Caesar's wing

Will make him fly an ordinary pitch,

Who else would soar above the view of men

~William Shakespeare, _Julius Caesar_

*

“ _How many ages hence / Shall this our lofty scene be acted over / In states unborn and accents yet unknown!_ ”

“You have to give it to her,” Jerusalem says after a short whistle of appreciation as she watches little Bessie Lawrence play her part. “Kid is _good_.”

Aubrey clears his throat. “You’re supposed to be up there with them, Mark Antony.”

“It’s just a rehearsal.”

“You’re supposed to pretend it’s not ‘just a rehearsal’.”

“Wow. You’re so stern. It’s almost like you’ve grown a spine.” Jerusalem makes a show out of patting up and down Aubrey’s back. “Yeah, yeah, I think I can feel it. _Some_ thing’s definitely there.”

“Jerry.”

“Aubrey.”

“Get up there.”

“Yessir! I guess. Hmm. If I didn’t like acting so much, I’d be going for your job. It’s the authority. The power. The, the, the—”

“ _Up there_.”

“Going, going…”

*

There’s something very sincere about Easy’s Caesar. He’s not there yet, but Aubrey thinks it’ll turn out great.

That everything will, actually. The play is salvaged, his grades are excellent, and Easy is coming back home with him for Christmas. Aubrey’s mother called him about it, said, make sure he’ll come, said, I’ll pick you up from the station, said, I’ll bake cookies. There’ll be _so many cookies_.

When the rehearsal ends, they’re all exhausted, but Easy somehow still finds it in him to trail after them to their room and start complaining about _The Post Office Girl_. He’s been stealing Aubrey’s copy and reading it in between his scenes and, apparently, he’s gotten through enough of the book to have an opinion.

“I just don’t get why she’s so _naïve_! Even Cinderella knew it was all for one night, right? Even freaking Cinderella knew everything would be back to her miserable normal, so why does this girl forget to watch her back? I mean, what’s _wrong_ with her? I get that she’s dazzled and all, but she can’t just be letting her guard down like this, I mean, doesn’t she know it’ll all be taken _away_?”

“I’m too tired for this,” Kipp declares, collapsing on his bed.

“I just don’t understand,” Easy says miserably. “Is this supposed to be a horror book?”

“N-ot,” Aubrey says slowly, gently prying it out of Easy’s hands. “How about you lie down?”

“I’m not some winded lady dying of consumption, but thanks.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Yes, yes, see you at dinner, I hear it’s fish tonight.”

“Why is he like this?” Quickly sighs once he’s gone.

“Must be the trauma,” Kipp says with a wink. “Maybe you were right all those years ago and kids in orphanages do have to shake cockroaches out of their shoes every morning.”

*

“So he’s coming with you?” her mother asks on the phone _yet again_ , and Aubrey can hear her trying to contain her excitement.

“Yeah, he is,” Aubrey tells her with a smile. It feels good, the smile. Something meant for her that she won’t see, perfectly fitting for this mess of a situation where, against himself, he hasn’t quite forgiven her yet. “We have a New Year’s resolution to start on.”

*

Friday 21 December marks the last day of the semester and the evening of _Julius Caesar_. It’s Christmas in three days, and Easy will be spending it with him, but all Aubrey can think about as kids’ parents flock into the auditorium after dropping their coats in one of the classrooms is the lines, and the costumes, and the microphones, and—

“Breathe,” Kipp advises, passing him a plastic bag. “That’s for puking.”

“I’m not going to throw up,” Aubrey assures him, or maybe himself.

“It’s okay to say ‘puke’,” Kipp says, rolling his eyes. “Or is that too colloquial?”

Aubrey turns to throw him a disapproving look, but the disapproval quickly turns to horror. “Why in God’s name are you still wearing jeans?!”

Kipp laughs and saunters away without a word, completely unbothered.

“I need a minute,” Aubrey says to no one and pushes through the clusters of pearl-clad mothers (“excuse me, ma’am”, “apologies, ma’am”). Once he’s out of the room, he’s so relieved that he forgets to be careful and bumps into someone right away.

“Oh, it’s you!” the woman interrupts halfway through yet another ‘apologies, ma’am’. “Aubrey Allen, wasn’t it?”

He recognises Kipp’s mother’s warm smile right away.

“Oh, hello,” he says, returning it clumsily. “How do you do?”

“Tell me,” she says in a conspiratorial tone, dragging him to the corner by the wrist. “Is my son behaving?”

She’s leaning over him, staring at him expectantly, and Aubrey tries to remember what betrays a liar (was it looking off to the left? or to the right?) as he assures that yes, naturally, her son _is_ behaving.

“Lies,” she says with a dazzling smile once he’s done nodding like a jack-in-the-box let loose. “My son _never_ behaves.”

Suddenly, he remembers it all: the brief, two-days-long stay at the Birdwhistle residence and how idyllic their family of three seemed, just imperfect enough to be perfect.

He remembers giving it up to go back home to his own mother, too.

(The things they did say, his mother and him:

“I wish you’d let me come to see the play, Aubrey.”

“It’d be a waste of time and money. It’d be— embarrassing.”

“For you?”

“For _you_. We’re just silly kids. It’s not the Globe.”

“Whatever gave you the impression I wanted the Globe?”

“Listen, see you at home, and that’s it.”)

(The things they did _not_ say:

“You’re punishing me. This is you, punishing me. This is me, being punished.”

“Oh, come now.”

“No, you’re _ba_ nishing me. I’m in exile. How very – do note the irony here, Aubrey – Shakespearian.”

“You’re wrong.”

“That’s the one thing you never really got the knack of, lying.”)

“It’s harmless when Kipp misbehaves,” Aubrey assures Mrs. Birdwhistle diplomatically. “I think he gets that from you, too.”

She laughs. “Partly, I bet, but…”

Aubrey smiles, waiting politely and watching her expression morph into something… well, not _sad_ , per se, but complicated to say the least.

“I worry about him sometimes,” she says, lowering her voice. “ _All_ the times.”

That’s how it is for mothers, he doesn’t say, because wouldn’t it be impolite?

That’s how it is for mothers, he doesn’t say, because hasn’t he forgotten, being the bastard that he is?

“It was a relief to see him bring friends home last year,” Mrs. Birdwhistle goes on. She taps her lower lip with the tip of her finger, and it comes off stained red. “I hope someday—”

Aubrey tilts his head questioningly.

“I hope it wasn’t the last time he brought someone home, is all,” she concludes, stepping away. “Anyway, I understand that you’re directing rather than playing, but break a leg all the same.”

She leaves him there and all Aubrey can think of in that crowded corridor is what it felt like to have snowflakes fall in his mouth as he and Easy rode a bike down an empty road towards his home even though they’d never get there like that in a million years.

(“Actually, it’d have taken two days, give or take,” Easy told him once, months later, because he’d actually calculated it. He’d actually—)

*

Once Aubrey comes back to the auditorium, he collides with someone else, but, this time, it’s decidedly not his fault.

“Sorry, sorry, wasn’t looking where I was— Oh, Mr. Director himself!” the kid says, blinking at him in surprise. “I guess we’ll see if you’re better than my brother. I’m guessing yes, but don’t tell him I said so because oh boy, he’s very touchy, that one…”

Lindsay Willow has changed, and, at the same time, hasn’t. He’s still stick-thin and wide-eyed like a ghost, but he’s grown a little taller, has cut his hair to be shoulder-length (a compromise, Aubrey suspects), and is wearing trousers this time.

“The trick was to put all my skirts in the wash one hour before we were supposed to leave,” he explains with a wink when he catches Aubrey taking note of it. “I still don’t mind skirts as such, but it’s the principle, you know? And guess what, Mother actually tried saving one with her hair-dryer anyway, talk about desperate!”

“I don’t think I’m better than your brother,” Aubrey says carefully. “And we’re actually directing this together, which I’m sure you know, seeing as you’re here.”

“Huh?” Lindsay says, frowning at him. “Oh, no, you’ve got it all wrong. My parents are here for Teddy, but me, I’m here for _Bessie_.”

That’s when Aubrey notices the bracelet on Lindsay’s wrist. It’s a blue, braided rope with a tiny whale pendant attached to it.

“She made it for me,” Lindsay explains proudly, shoving his wrist in Aubrey’s face and nearly blinding him in the process. “She sent it to me together with a letter.”

Aubrey smiles, unsure what to say. Lindsay, bless him, clearly doesn’t mind the lack of a reaction and cheerfully goes on.

“My school is not so bad that they’d open people’s letters and read them before handing them over, but, sometimes, the envelopes are see-through, so we’re keeping it PG-13 anyway. Not that we wouldn’t otherwise, but I feel like it needs to be said. What I’m getting at is that my intentions are pure. Marriage first, everything else later. Which will be so much later in our case because it’d be illegal for us to get married as of now, which is really making me rethink the whole waiting-till-marriage thing, actually…”

There’s something to be said for people who seem to have no self-consciousness ( _or_ self-awareness) whatsoever. Aubrey suspects it’s what’s carrying Lindsay Willow through his all-girls-boarding-school life.

“…and anyway, it’s not like I’ve proposed, but someday, I might, and she might even say yes, don’t you think?”

Aubrey doesn’t have the heart not to nod in assent.

“Someday, I’m sure,” he adds, careful not to look either to the left or to the right.

Lindsay seems to grow serious like he’s seen right through him anyway.

“Someday, yeah,” he says, nodding slowly. “But actually, I’m more concerned with the now.”

“Oh?”

“I can’t deny it: I am waiting for things to get better,” Lindsay goes on. “But I’m trying to appreciate all the crumbs of now, if that makes sense.”

“I… think it does?”

It _does_ , but not necessarily when someone’s stuck somewhere they feel they don’t belong 24/7.

“I like going on walks, and I like talking to birds, and I like getting letters from Bessie. She draws me ‘the fish of the week’ on each one and I’ve already learned so much more than I ever wanted to know about some of the creepy-crawly things that live down there,” he says, some of the cheer returning to his voice. “Just to clarify, by ‘down there’ I mean the bottom of the ocean, and not one’s crotch area.”

“I gathered.”

“Unless someone has crabs.”

“Yes, unless.”

“Anyway, what I mean is that now may suck, but now is kind of all we have,” Lindsay concludes. “And the now of the now – the now of me standing here, about to see Bessie up on the stage, because, er, not to rush you or anything, but it’s almost time – is not half so bad.”

Aubrey is about to agree when he takes a look at his watch and—

“Bloody hell!”

“Oh, really? And Bessie said you’re the one who _never_ swears.”

*

The first two acts go well.

The third is spectacular.

There is a kind of brutal brevity to Caesar’s death in the play. It comes sooner than you’d expect, and there’s no great speech from the betrayed Caesar – all the realising he does needs to be conveyed through his expressions alone, and then there’s that little ‘ _Et tu, Brute? –_ Then fall, Caesar’, and that’s that.

Up on that stage, it seems to go on for ages, and it’s nothing like Aubrey remembers it from rehearsals: before, Easy would always look either too surprised or not surprised enough but, now, his expression is the perfect – eerily perfect – mixture of naïve betrayal and resignation, both an _Et tu, Brute_ and a _but of course._

It’s nothing short of heartbreaking, and it doesn’t help (which, in theatre, only means that it _does_ help) that he’s so small, and so thin, and so un-Caesar-like.

And all that blood, too.

They did have a rehearsal with fake blood, but there was significantly less of it then. Now, it’s spreading like a flood, as though it’s trying to consume Easy, as though he’s going to drown in it. Twenty-three kids wiping off twenty-three fake swords, but the blood, it doesn’t look fake. It doesn’t look like ketchup (it’s _not_ ketchup), and it doesn’t look like juice (it’s _not_ juice), and it doesn’t look like paint (but it _is_ paint, isn’t it?).

It looks real and Aubrey stares and thinks: I _am_ better than Teddy Willow.

Except that’s not true because what he’s really thinking is: That’s what it’d look like if he was bleeding out for real. That’s what it’d look like if all his friends betrayed him and if he was bleeding out for real.

Easy’s fingers twitch, and Aubrey can’t stop thinking it now that he’s started: How that’s how his fingers would twitch if this was for real.

But none of it is. For real.

None of it is, and so why does it _look_ so fucking real?

They decided to announce a refreshments break right after Caesar’s death even though it meant splitting a scene into two, so Aubrey can’t even have the relief of Easy taking the bloodied – _stained_ – clothes off, since he’ll have to go back to playing a corpse in twenty minutes.

“This so _won’t_ wash off,” he complains once he’s backstage, pinching the soaked fabric where it sticks to his skin. “How did we do?”

“Excuse me,” Aubrey mumbles, pushing past the others, and boy, could he use that plastic bag now.

He ends up escaping all the way to the entrance hall since there’s no one there, but even that is not good enough: there, surrounded by all that blue Easy painted all over the walls, he can’t breathe either. He ends up going outside even though he doesn’t have a jacket with him, and how fitting that this evening—

( _The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,_

 _But in ourselves, that we are underlings._ )

—there are no clouds.

“Why, hello,” someone says at Aubrey’s left, startling him. “Care for a smoke?”

The boy is tall and Aubrey’s age. Maybe a year older. He’s criminally handsome – the kind of handsome that’s disturbing: a perfect jawline, a perfect hairline, perfect shoulders, perfection all over – the kind of handsome that would be boring if not for the crooked smile and the slightly too-sharp canine that Aubrey can just glimpse, doing away with the otherwise flawless symmetry of his Patrician face – and he has a cigarette in one long-fingered hand.

Aubrey doesn’t recognise him, and Wilgefortis is not big enough of a school for him not to.

“Are you somebody’s brother?” he asks, shaking his head at the pack of cigarettes in the boy’s extended hand.

“Oh, yes, but that’s not why I’m here,” the boy laughs. “My family is of the ‘even your great-great-great-grandfather went to St. Nectan’s’ sort, but I have friends here.”

Aubrey doesn’t tolerate biases in himself as a general rule, but he does allow himself a small sigh upon hearing St. Nectan’s name.

“ _A_ friend,” the boy clarifies. “He was supposed to be Caesar but he gave it up. He invited me a while ago and then said ‘don’t bother coming, the kid who’s replacing me is shite’ but I’m glad I did come, since I can hardly agree with him on that point, can I?”

There’s something about the boy’s bone structure… Maybe it’s the cheekbones. Maybe it’s how, if Aubrey were to hit him (only why would he think of such things, he who never hits people and hardly ever so much as thinks about doing it?), his knuckles would surely split.

“Jonathan,” Aubrey acknowledges, careful not to betray the animosity he feels at the mere sound of the name. “Well.”

“I mean, that skinny kid certainly doesn’t look like your typical Caesar, but he did something a little bit brilliant with the role, I’ve got to admit,” the boy says, nodding as though he’s agreeing with something Aubrey said. “I might even never see the play the same way. I might even— But the little black girl as Cassius though? So many interesting choices!”

“Well, I think she was a little bit brilliant too,” Aubrey says coldly. The boy blinks at him, clearly surprised, and then barks out a laugh.

“Oh, sure, sure, sorry, that did sound wrong, didn’t it?” he says, waving his hand around. “Anyway, I was considering introducing myself to Caesar, asking for an autograph, maybe, but I’m afraid I’ll have to leave early if I want to catch my last train.”

He drops the cigarette and doesn’t stomp on it. Aubrey watches as it glints red on the snowless ground that hasn’t had any rain in weeks.

“But then, there’ll be other Christmases, right?” the boy says, patting his pockets. It sounds strangely ominous. “Anyway, nice talking to you, Aubrey.”

“I never introduced myself.”

“Didn’t you?” the boy says in a bored tone. “I know of you anyway, isn’t that funny?”

“So you’re not staying for the second half?” Aubrey asks, in the last effort at civility.

“Like I said, I can’t,” the boy says with a small smile. “And I’ve already seen all I came here to see, anyway.”

“Well, I’m glad you enjoyed what you did see.”

The smile widens. “Name’s Christian, by the way. Christian Scott, and yes, I do mean the spa retreats Scotts. And the infamous 87’ lawsuit Scotts. _And_ the art-collectors Scotts.”

He leaves without once glancing over his shoulder, but Aubrey feels watched as he stomps out the cigarette anyway.

He feels watched when he picks it up, too.

*

After the show, Easy wrings his costume over a bucket and Aubrey watches – and listens to – all that dripping red without looking away once.

*

The day after, Easy wakes up with a sore throat.

“You’re sick _again_?” Quickly says, scandalised, as soon as Easy manages to croak out a hello at breakfast. “Oh, come _on_.”

“It’s because of all that yelling I had to do on stage,” Easy manages, but it’s quickly disproven when he ends up sneezing in his porridge seven times in a row.

“At least seven is a lucky number,” Kipp notes, except then Easy sneezes again.

Later, Aubrey stops by Easy’s dormitory to make sure that he’s already packed, and learns that Easy hasn’t even started.

“Look, I can’t go with you,” he croaks, wiping his nose off with his sleeve. Aubrey sighs and offers him a handkerchief.

“Why is this an actual cloth,” Easy says with wonder. “Does it have your initials on it?”

“Just wash it later,” Aubrey sighs. “What was it about you not going with me?”

“I know I promised your mother I would but I’m kind of dying, so,” Easy says with a wry smile. “I’ll try to eat enough medicine to get well by Boxing Day and then I’ll join you then, how about that?”

“We can get you medicine at mine,” Aubrey points out, unreasonably disappointed. Want-to-bang-my-head-on-the-wall-for-an-hour disappointed. “What does it matter where you’re going to be sick?”

“Well, you’ll all catch it if we share a train compartment, for one,” Easy points out. “And I’m sure there are hospitality rules I’d be breaking it I appeared half-dead on your mother’s doorstep.”

“My mother wouldn’t mind.”

“No, I don’t think she would, but she’s not exactly a single parent, is she?”

Aubrey gets the cue, even though sometimes he’s lucky enough (lucky?) to forget that his mother isn’t a single parent.

“Get well by Christmas Eve and come then,” Aubrey pleads instead of saying something even more incriminating like:

I need you there.

like:

She needs you there.

like:

We need you there.

“Or maybe I could just stay here with you and—”

But Easy doesn’t let him finish. He presses the handkerchief to Aubrey’s mouth to stop the words and keeps it there but oh, why won’t he just use his hands?

“Christmas Eve,” he says with a small smile, and no wonder he keeps getting sick. He’s so small, and he hasn’t been eating well, and he hasn’t been sleeping well, and it’s so cold outside, and maybe instead of the newsboy cap, he should be wearing a proper hat, and—

“Christmas Eve,” Aubrey repeats, like a promise, and the world better keep it for them. It better.

*

“Are you happy to be going home at last?” Treasure Little asks him the last time they meet up on the roof, an hour before they’re meant to get in the buses taking them to the station.

“I don’t know,” Aubrey says after mulling it over for a while. “Are you?”

“No,” Treasure says simply, no trace of bitterness in her smile, and there’s a question Aubrey’s been not-asking her for m—

Really, for years, now.

“It’ll pass quickly,” Aubrey says, wording it like that on purpose, because, although Treasure has given no indication that she returns Quickly’s feelings, he still suspects that his name will cheer her up some.

“It’ll pass, in any case,” she says, like she’s trying to convince herself, and, if they were drinking, Aubrey would certainly drink to that.

*

On the train, Kipp and Jerusalem try to build a card house, a truly Sisyphean task inside something that shakes like a can that someone’s kicking around for fun.

“It’s about the challenge,” Jerusalem explains when Aubrey raises an eyebrow at them over the edge of his crosswords book. “You’re a terrible bore, AA, but I hope you’ll have a nice Christmas _any_ way.”

Later, on the station, Regina kisses his cheek goodbye, and Quickly adjusts his scarf for him, reminding him to eat a lot of vegetables.

“You’ve probably already caught whatever Easy has anyway,” he sighs before his eyes widen in horror. “Please don’t breathe on me.”

After that, Aubrey cranes his neck to search for his mother in the crowd—

(“For the last time, you don’t have to collect me from the station. I can just get another train. The roads are going to be slick, and the way you drive…”

“I am collecting you, end of the discussion! I have some _ABBA_ records to listen to on the way there, all right?”)

—but she’s nowhere to be seen.

Traffic, he guesses.

Once the school crowd is gone, he settles on a bench with his copy of _The Death of the Heart._

There’s something about the book. Something that makes it different from all the other books he’s read, which is just ridiculous, because the same can be said of every book, but _this one_ —

Oh, this one.

It’s how the main character is an orphan and how, for once, it’s not just Victorian, but simply heart-breaking. It’s how she’s an orphan not just because she’s parentless, but because she’s alone. It’s how you never meet her mother in the book, but how you know you’d like to meet her in real life anyway. It’s how—

He’s been waiting for two hours when he decides to find a payphone and call home. Nothing.

He’s been waiting for three hours when he tries again.

He’s been waiting for four hours when someone in a uniform asks him if he’s all right and yes, yes, I’m just waiting for someone, and they’re a little late, that’s all.

He’s been waiting for five hours when he starts tearing the corners of the book’s pages and chewing them to keep himself from chewing on his nails.

He’s been waiting for close to six hours when his father – his father? – finds him, wearing his best coat and an expression that, for once, isn’t blank, and, just like that, Aubrey knows.

“I had to borrow a neighbour’s car,” his father says slowly – too slowly. “I had to borrow a neighbour’s car because ours is—”

Aubrey holds out a hand to stop him.

“Just tell me if she’s dead,” he says, his voice so shaky that he’s surprised what comes out is still words. “Can you do that?”

But frankly, it’s unnecessary, because Aubrey _already knows._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, guys. look. I know that this is very cliche of me, and mean, too, but! I'm sad, please don't yell at me? :') I love you all very much <3 And! this is so not the last you've seen of Shirley Allen. Nope, I'm not resurrecting her, because this is not the CW show Supernatural, but I still have plans for her, I promise! 
> 
> Also! I didn't want to leave you hanging with this terrible, dramatic finish, so I'm literally posting the next chapter tomorrow! So, till then <3


	10. when we were gone astray, December 2001

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> once upon a funeral

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all right, so, at the beginning of this chapter, Aubrey's Mum tells him _Fitcher's Bird_ so if you already know the story, I'm sorry, and if you don't know it and would rather not read it first through my clumsy rendition, I'm also sorry and [here](https://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm046.html) is a link. It's the typical Grimm level of brutal, so a warning for people being cut to pieces etc.! 
> 
> As for the content warnings for the actual chapter: Aubrey is, as you probably suspect, in a bad place, but I'm not sure what specific thing I could/should warn you about (it's always a fine line when it comes to content warnings and spoiling things) so don't hesitate to message me (@yoyointhegarden on tumblr/ ihidmyyoyointhegarden@gmail.com) for details! If this helps: the second 'huge' bad thing I keep warning you about isn't until year 5 & there are no actual suicide attempts in this story (at least definitely not in part 4!). 
> 
> Actually, this chapter is pretty tame compared to the one I'll post next and it has some..... nice? things happen in it, even. The next one, though. The next one will be a ride.
> 
> Anyway, I love you all <3 Take care <3

Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, _Burial of Atala_

*

Grief is a Mouse—

And chooses Wainscot in the Breast

For His Shy House—

And baffles quest—

~Emily Dickinson, _Grief Is a Mouse_

*

One night, when he’s six years old, his mother tells him the story of _Bluebeard_ , and he _hates_ it.

“Come on, it has a good ending, doesn’t it?” she laughs, wiping his nose off.

“But why does she have to wait so long to be saved, and besides, what about all those other wives he killed?”

“You’re a smart one, kid,” she says, shaking her head. “Too smart for your own good.”

“I don’t like this story _at all_.”

“Yes, I’ve gathered. Well, I suppose I could tell you a similar one. A better one.”

“Like this one, but better?” he makes sure.

She nods and pats the pillow next to her. She doesn’t hug him much, but it’s fine. He doesn’t need it, he doesn’t, and just being together like this, cocooned inside the night’s good grace, feels like enough of a hug to sustain him for a while anyway.

She doesn’t hug him much but she’s good to him. He knows. He can tell. He’s a smart one, and he can tell.

“This one is called _Fitcher’s Bird_ , and it goes like this,” his mother starts in a lowered voice, and why would she lower it? “ _Once upon a time, there was a truly nasty sorcerer who would take the form of a beggar and kidnap young women to make them his brides._

 _One day, he kidnapped the eldest of a local man’s three daughters and took her to his house in the middle of a dark, dark forest. He promised her that she’d be happy there –_ funny, how ‘happy’ works in fairy tales _– and that he’d give her everything she wanted. Soon, he told her that he had to leave for a while and handed her a set of keys, and an egg. He instructed that she could go into all rooms save for one, unlocked by the smallest key of the bunch, and that the penalty for breaking that rule would be death. He also told her that she should carry the egg everywhere with her, or else great misfortune would follow._

_Once he’d gone, the eldest sister carefully examined all the beautiful rooms of his house, but she couldn’t resist the temptation of opening that one forbidden door._

_Inside the chamber, there was a basin filled with blood and dismembered girls. Terrified, the eldest sister dropped the egg and it fell in. She fished it out of the basin and carefully cleaned it of blood, but the red would always return to the shell._

_When the sorcerer returned, he asked for the keys and the egg at once. Trembling, the eldest sister handed the egg over. When he saw that it was stained, the sorcerer cut his bride-not-to-be to pieces and she ended up in that dreaded basin herself._

_Now, it was the second sister’s turn. She, too, was carried away by the sorcerer and she, too, couldn’t keep her curiosity at bay once he left her alone with the set of keys and the egg. She ended up sharing the eldest sister’s fate._

_Finally, the sorcerer kidnapped the youngest, and the last, sister. But oh, this one was clever. As soon as the sorcerer left, she set that blasted egg aside and went exploring. When she found the basin with her dismembered sisters inside, she was horrified, but she didn’t let grief overwhelm her. She arranged the body parts back together until the bodies were whole and, magically, her sisters came back to life._

_When the sorcerer returned, he was glad to see the egg clean. He announced that the youngest sister would be his wife and that he’d do whatever she wanted. She said, all right, I’ll marry you, but first, you’ll take gold to my parents’ house, and you’ll carry it yourself._

_She painted her sisters gold when the sorcerer agreed, hid them in the basket he was to carry, and told him that she’d be watching him from one of the windows to make sure that he would carry the gold all the way to her parents’ house. While he was gone, she found an old skull, dressed it in flowers, and put it in a window. She herself took a dip in honey, then slashed some pillows open and rolled in the feathers. She left the sorcerer’s house like this and she even met him on the way._

_The Sorcerer asked her, ‘You, Fitcher's bird, where are you coming from?’_

_‘I am coming from Fitcher's house,’ she replied._

_‘What is my young bride doing there?’ he asked then._

_‘She has swept the house from bottom to top, and now she is looking out of the attic window.’_

_The sorcerer looked towards the house and, mistaking the dressed skull for his bride, waved in a greeting. The sister, dressed as a bird, got safely home, and, once the sorcerer arrived at his house, her relatives locked it up and set it on fire, burning him down in it._

Well? How do you like this one?”

“It’s better.”

“It’s about love,” his mother says with a smile.

“Love?”

“Yes. It’s how she stays behind and makes sure that her sisters are safe first.”

“I see.”

It will take him years to understand that there are two kinds of love in her understanding:

The sacrificial love of _Fitcher’s Bird_ , which is for her, and the love of concurring/killing/owning things, which is for him.

It will take him years to understand, but he’ll never learn, like the bad son that he is.

*

The world is fragmented like a broken mirror that someone put back together all wrong. Aubrey doesn’t recognise anything in it but he’s pretending not to be blind, and he thinks he’s doing well.

(He thought that the world was fragmented before, and how will he ever love _Dora Maar au Chat_ again?)

The funeral is a quiet affair, and he doesn’t cry. He hasn’t cried once. There must be something wrong with him, but it only makes sense in a world that’s all wrong itself.

They argued before she left to collect him, his parents. His father admitted as much though he failed to provide any details.

“It doesn’t matter now, does it?” he said when Aubrey asked, and Aubrey remembers nodding along.

It didn’t matter. _Nothing_ did.

It’s 24 December (his father might not be influential enough to bring Aubrey’s mother back from the dead, but he’s just influential enough to get her a quick funeral) and Aubrey is not packed, but there’s no way he’s staying.

He’s just not packed because he doesn’t need things. He doesn’t need anything anymore.

With one exception.

Also: it doesn’t rain. There’s no forest of dark umbrellas. It’s not a cheap film.

“Hey, neighbour,” Peggy Gilbert, a housewife that lives three miles away from them, says once they leave the stuffy church Aubrey was baptised in.

(The one indulgence of his mother’s wishes on his father’s part.)

“Ma’am,” Aubrey says, wondering what she wants. An obligatory ‘I’m so sorry’ is incoming, he guesses, though Peggy Gilbert is not friends with anything obligatory: even now, instead of black, she’s wearing beige overalls under her coat.

“Listen,” Peggy says conspiratorially, leaning towards him and glancing left and right as though to check that no one’s listening. “If you want to get drunk, you know where to find me.”

Oh, but Aubrey doesn’t know anything anymore.

He blinks at her and wonders if that’s what she and his mother used to do. He can just imagine it: the two of them sprawled on the carpet, slowly emptying a bottle of wine that Peggy’s husband had been saving for dinners with his boss and telling each other stories.

He wants to ask Peggy to remember those stories, to save them for later and hold on to them until he’s strong enough to ask her for them, but he doesn’t have the strength (sic).

Later, after they get back home, he changes out of the stiff funeral clothes and into something more comfortable (though nothing is ever, and especially now, comfortable) and leaves, just like that. No goodbye to his father, no post-it note on the fridge inside which there’s still some leftover duck meat.

He walks, and then he gets on a bus, and then he gets on a train.

Easy—

(easy there, easy)

—is still at Wilgefortis. Aubrey knows because Easy actually called the day before to tell him that he’s ‘eatink begetables but still sick’ and to expect him right after Christmas. All Aubrey said during the conversation was ‘yes?’ and ‘oh’ and ‘all right’ and ‘bye’. Easy didn’t magically guess that something was wrong and Aubrey didn’t tell him because it felt nice to hear the voice of someone in whose head Aubrey’s mother was still alive.

He walks, and then he gets on a bus, and then he gets on a train. Time passes – and isn’t it funny how time passes? How it has the nerve? – and Aubrey spends half the ride sharing his compartment with a moustached man who’s reading one of the right-leaning newspapers his father likes.

Outside, the sun starts its slow crawl downwards, and it occurs to Aubrey that someone must be dying in the world every second.

He blinks, someone dies. He inhales, someone dies. He exhales, someone dies. He is, someone dies. He lives, someone dies.

Oh, but he’s felt this before. It’s not wanting to die – not anything that active – but rather the desire to never have existed in the first place.

But surely, there must be a poem for this.

Surely.

Oh, yes.

It goes something like this:

_The stars are not wanted now; put out every one._

And then—

But there’s no space in Aubrey’s head for poems. Next to the clutter of what’s happened, there’s only space for one single, little, tiny, teeny-weeny, wee sprout of a baby thought.

He gets off the train in Bullford and walks all the way to Wilgefortis. By the time he gets there, it’s dark outside, and the gate is locked, but he doesn’t have the energy to ring the bell, so he just climbs over instead. He loses the energy for climbing halfway down the other side, too, and so he just lets go and falls like a sack of potatoes, which is all sorts of funny, because he can’t tell if he really is like one, or if he’d just really want to be one.

Once he’s on the ground, he finds that he doesn’t have the energy to get up, either, but he can stay: no one would find him here, and it’s so cold that he’d probably be dead by morning, and it’s not that he minds the thought all that much, but there’s a chance Easy would find him _then_ , and that kind of a Christmas present just won’t do.

He ends up throwing up all over himself, probably because of the fall. He ate before, during the wake, because someone kept putting toothpick appetizers in his hands and he couldn’t be bothered to find somewhere to dump them.

Anyway, he takes that sprout of a thought (that sprout of a thought which is really just a single name) and he weeds it out because there’s no way in hell – and isn’t this hell? – that he’s going to go to Easy like this. He’ll just have to crawl all the way to the school and find himself some corner to sleep in without bumping into anyone. It should be do-able, once he remembers how to move.

In the end, it takes him half an hour to muster enough strength to get up – his watch hasn’t stopped, even though everything should – and another half an hour to actually make his way to the school’s entrance hall. Once there, he tries to remember the way to the nearest supply closet but ends up settling down on the stairs instead.

 _You’ve painted a sea here_ , he thinks at the Easy that lives in his head when Aubrey’s lucky enough to deserve him there, _so how come I’m not drowning?_

He remembers the poem now. It goes something like this:

_The stars are not wanted now; put out every one._

_Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun._

_Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood._

_For nothing now can ever come to any good._

Here’s something Aubrey learns about death over the course of the next hour: sometimes, it doesn’t start on the outside. Sometimes, it starts on the inside. It begins to put you on like you’re a costume so it can wear you, which is to say, rule you. It’s like when you’re inside a jumper but haven’t fitted your arms through the sleeves yet, and Aubrey feels it happening now: feels the intruder fitting its limbs through his, pulling his fingers on like gloves, shoving organs aside to make space for the nothing of itself.

By the time Easy finds him, it’s almost too late.

“Aubrey?” he says from the top of the staircase. “What are you doing here?”

It takes three blinks for him to be kneeling in front of Aubrey and grabbing at his coat.

“What’s this?” Easy – red-nosed, red-eyed, tangle-haired, lovely Easy – says, frowning at his fingers. Aubrey expects him to wipe his hand off on something as soon as he realises it’s sick, but he only meets Aubrey’s eyes and presses his other hand to Aubrey’s forehead as if to check his temperature. “Hey.”

“This isn’t how this goes,” Aubrey manages to say. He doesn’t want to say it – he can’t – but for Easy’s sake, he will. “You have to go back up the stairs and pretend you haven’t seen me, because I haven’t thought this through and there are no tidings, and there's no comfort, and there's no joy.”

“What are you talking about?” Easy, helping him out of the soiled coat like Aubrey’s a ragdoll, and oh, how Aubrey would like that. “What happened?”

He looks composed, but there’s worry under it. Aubrey knows. He can tell. He’s a smart one, and he can tell.

“Are you using the handkerchief?” he asks because Easy’s nose is leaking like a tap. “It doesn’t have my initials on it, by the way. My mother didn’t like embroidery.”

Easy opens his mouth as if to say something and then goes very still.

“Didn’t?” he repeats carefully.

“Didn’t,” Aubrey confirms, dropping his head between his knees. He doesn’t expect Easy’s hand – the clean one – to brush through his hair, but he gets it anyway, and he was right to come here.

It was selfish of him, but he was right to come here.

*

In the dream, Aubrey is talking to his father.

Well, talking at his father anyway.

“Here’s something Orpheus should have known,” he’s saying. “The trick is to not let them die in the first place.”

*

When Aubrey wakes up sometime before dawn, he has his head in Easy’s lap, which is pretty much the only redeemable thing about the world right then. He’s wearing a jumper he doesn’t remember putting on and he doesn’t have trousers on. They’re in Easy’s bed, and Easy has his fingers in Aubrey’s hair, but he’s keeping them still.

“I don’t know what to do,” he tells Aubrey as soon as he realises Aubrey’s awake. “Should I call for an adult?”

“It’s like the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft,” Aubrey says to Easy’s knee, pulling a blanket tighter around himself.

“Huh?”

“It’s how they just cut some of the painting out of the frames,” Aubrey explains. “It’s how they just cut them out of the frames.”

“And bits of canvas were left behind,” Easy says, catching on. “Stuck in the frames.”

“Brutal, cruel, disgusting,” Aubrey lists off. “ _Barbaric_. You can’t just cut something out of the world like that. You _can’t_.”

Something wet hits Aubrey’s cheek and he thinks it must be Easy’s nose leaking again, but, when he looks up, it turns out that Easy is crying. He’s very quiet about it, and he closes his eyes when Aubrey catches him, like Aubrey wasn’t meant to see.

“I’m sorry,” he says, wiping his eyes off with the back of his hand and sliding out of bed. He places a pillow under Aubrey’s head and then walks up to his desk. He’s wearing pyjamas that Regina and Bessie gave him as a joined Christmas present – the pants have tiny whales printed all over them and the shirt has ‘sometimes life is over-whale-ming!’ stitched at the front – and Aubrey stares at his back as Easy rummages in the desk’s drawer.

There’s something he knows in that moment, something that he won’t know when he wakes up again in the morning. Something small that won’t stand a chance against the swamp of self-delusions inside his head, something tiny that’ll get buried under everything that has and everything that hasn’t happened.

It’s how Easy was the one thought Aubrey could form before coming here.

It’s how Easy’s crying for him, even though Aubrey can’t even cry for himself.

It’s how one curl sticks up strange and Aubrey can’t imagine ever wanting to pat it down.

So it won’t last, this thought, but, just then, Aubrey summons the energy to think it and does so as Easy turns around with the Ida Rentoul Outhwaite tie in hand.

“I steal it sometimes,” Easy says sheepishly. He comes back to bed and gently wraps it around Aubrey’s throat, like a scarf.

“You don’t know how to tie it?” Aubrey says, pushing the pillow aside so Easy can be his pillow again.

“You’ll teach me when you feel better,” Easy says, like a promise that Aubrey _will_ feel better.

“All right,” he says as Easy pulls the blanket close around his shoulders and, as he drifts off, he’s still thinking this endangered, about-to-become-extinct little thought.

And the thought is of course:

_I love you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so.... this ending is so much more saccharine than I expected. I'm not a huge fan of 'romance-makes-mental-stuff-better' narratives even if they're very hard to avoid, so don't expect it to last, I suppose. 
> 
> Anyway, the poem is "Funeral Blues"/"Stop All the Clocks" by W. H. Auden, and the whale pun I of course haven't come up with myself. I just googled 'whale puns'. Yes, that is an actual thing I googled and yes, I might have read more of those than was strictly necessary. 
> 
> Thank you for reading <3


	11. ) o c, december 2001 -- january 2002

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ignore the weird title, please. 
> 
> anyway, WARNING WARNING WARNING, PLEASE READ: 
> 
> Guys, this is the second most controversial chapter of this story. Or maybe simply the most controversial one. In any case, the other controversial one hasn't been posted yet, so this one is definitely the most controversial one to date. I've been kind of dreading posting it, so I need to give you some warnings & clarify a few things: 
> 
> *this has mentions of (mostly attempted) self-harm though no sharp tools are ever used   
> *people's choices in this one are pretty dubious, the coping mechanisms described are pretty unhealthy, the relationship development is messed-up, and this is not, in any way, meant to be a 'that's how you deal with grief' guide. I've been trying really hard to imagine how Aubrey would react for months now, and this is what I came up with even if it's not pretty  
> *what happens in this chapter is not meant to be sexual in any way   
> *perhaps you'll read this chapter and think I'm a drama queen but better safe than sorry, so do proceed with caution! (as always, feel free to message me for details!)
> 
> All that said, remember I love you all <3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wrestling with grief one holiday at a time

A. Archer, _Dog Mourning Its Little Master_

*

We must learn to die: That is all of life.

~Rainer Maria Rilke, from a letter to Mimi Romanelli

*

On Christmas day, Easy brings Aubrey toast, but Aubrey doesn’t have the strength to chew, so, half an hour later, Easy comes back with a bowl of porridge.

“I had to make it myself, so it’s a little burnt, but can you pretend that the brown bits are cinnamon?”

Aubrey has just enough energy to avoid forcing Easy to feed the porridge to him, so he grabs a spoon and gets to it. Pretending that the brown bits are cinnamon isn’t even that hard: he can’t taste anything anyway.

The blizzard starts in the afternoon, and Aubrey tells Easy that he’s not going to attend the Christmas dinner but that

“You should go on ahead.”

“No way,” Easy says, scowling at him. “Everyone who’s staying here for Christmas this year is a wanker.”

“We’re staying here for Christmas,” Aubrey points out.

“Everyone _else_.”

Easy leaves for a bit to inform December Graham that they won’t be joining them – and, Aubrey supposes, of the other thing, too – and, while he’s gone, the lights go out.

“It’s the snow,” Easy says when he comes back with a lighted candle in his hand and three others shoved in his pocket. “December says we should be careful not to burn the school down.”

It’s already dark outside and the glow of the candles seems almost obscene as Easy lights them one by one. Aubrey’s teeth are chattering, but he’s not even cold.

“She says she’ll have some leftover dinner for us later,” Easy adds, standing over Aubrey with hands on his hips. “She says to tell you—”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“All right, then,” Easy sighs. “But are you sure? Because she says—”

“I’m _sure_.”

It takes everything in him to put emphasis on that ‘sure’. He has nothing left after that.

Easy is wearing a gaudy Christmas jumper. This one is Regina’s handiwork too: there’s a Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer on the front and the nose is an actual, honest-to-god pom-pom. Aubrey stares at it, and has this ridiculous thought that he’d very much like to be that jumper. Life would be so lovely then, he’d take it all: being carelessly slang over the back of Easy’s chair, being worn over Easy’s school shirt, being worn over nothing, being worn.

Being useful. Doing the only thing he can imagine ever wanting to do again and keeping Easy warm.

 _I feel like you’re bleeding out and have stopped breathing_ , Easy whispered earlier, when he thought Aubrey was asleep, _and I don’t know how to perform CPR._

“Aubrey,” Easy says now, leaning over him with that one candle in hand and fisting the fabric of Aubrey’s shirt with the other. “Just remember: I’ll do anything you ask.”

Aubrey doesn’t ask for anything just then, but he does make sure to remember.

*

He’s not sure when he starts thinking about hurting himself.

Maybe it’s not really a thought. Maybe it’s just an animal, perched and staring at him, waiting for his move, only, instead of sitting on a nearby fence, it’s sitting somewhere inside him.

He doesn’t mean hurt like terrible pain. He only means hurt like feeling something. Hurt like distract-me-from-how-she’s-no-longer.

The first time, he tries it in the bathroom. He tilts his head back and then swings it forward, but it’s no good: instinct makes him slow down before his skull connects with the wall, and it doesn’t even leave a bruise.

The second time, he tries it in the kitchen. He lets his finger hover over the mug of freshly made tea – Easy has fallen asleep, exhausted by having to keep an eye on him no doubt, and so it’s the first time Aubrey’s making tea for himself since… well – until it’s an inch above the hot water, half an inch, less. He closes his eyes and wills himself to plunge the finger in but he can’t bring himself to, God _damn_ it.

The third time, he tries it in bed. Easy is brushing his teeth in the bathroom – Aubrey can hear the sloshing, and what a mundane thing, what a potentially lovely thing, what a… Easy’s jumper, or his toothbrush, in any case – and the animal inside Aubrey is digging its claws in. _Are you scary_ , Aubrey would ask it if it understood human speech (if it existed in the first place), _or are you scared?_ Aubrey brings his hand to his mouth and bites the base of his thumb, trying to get to blood. This time, he doesn’t make it sudden, but progressively clenches his teeth, but it’s no good either: he can’t. It seemed so easy (ha) when Easy did it to his other hand all those years ago, and now—

It seemed so Easy. Ha.

*

Once, they were walking down the side of the road, when they heard a crunch. All things considered, it was a quiet sound – a meek protest they could have easily brushed off as the sliding of gravel – but they’d both heard it, make no mistake.

“Oops,” Aubrey’s mother said as they stopped walking.

(Aubrey had been the first to stop walking.)

She put her hand on his shoulder for balance and brought her leg up until they could both inspect the sole of her shoe.

“A snail,” she said, scrubbing at the bits of flesh-glued shell with the tip of her nail. “Poor lad.”

“Snails are not ‘lads’,” Aubrey, then six, said. “They’re intervebrates.”

“Invertebrates,” his mother corrected, smiling at the tiny crime smeared on her shoe, so easy to hide, easier still to overlook.

 _We’ll have snail police on our trail_ , Aubrey thought, _but, being snails, they’ll never catch us. I’ll be rooting for them, though._

“This isn’t something to worry about since they’re so small,” his mother told him because she could already see that he did worry.

“It’s how we didn’t just kill him,” Aubrey said in all his pre-school seriousness. “It’s how we’ve ruined his home, too.”

And what he remembers best from that moment is the ‘we’.

Even crimes can be good when there’s a ‘we’, and, as he lies in Easy’s bed and counts backwards from one hundred, that’s the only philosophy he can imagine ever living according to.

*

“I need your help,” Aubrey says two days before the end of the year.

“Anything,” Easy says simply, all attention, as he folds his history essay notes.

“No, never mind,” Aubrey mumbles, ever the coward.

*

Aubrey’s very careful not to think about Treasure during the holidays. It’s how she doesn’t deserve but probably gets what Aubrey has no right to want but wants anyway.

*

It starts simply.

It’s the evening of New Year’s Eve, and the electricity is gone again even though they supposedly fixed the issue. The heat radiators haven’t cooled off just yet, but Easy has already lighted a candle and left for more. Aubrey’s tired of trying to sleep – he’s been in bed since morning but, lately, there are no mornings: dividing days as though one is cutting a pie into slices seems like too silly an undertaking – so he decides to get up, only he’s too tired to stand up, too, so he ends up rolling off the bed and to the floor in a tangle of sheets.

It hurts, but not enough, and he considers climbing back on the bed just to roll off it again, but he doesn’t have the strength for that either ( _a good-for-nothing, a weakling, a die-already_ , he thinks).

He doesn’t have the strength to drag himself to the nearest stairs, either, but it’s fine: he’d never go through with it anyway.

He gets it actually: he’s like a cut-off limb now. These are his last twitches, but most of him is dead.

 _I’ve figured it out_ , he tells his mother in his head, _I’m not mourning you properly because, you see, I’m quite dead myself._

Except then he starts crying. After a week, he finally starts crying.

It starts out fine. It starts with wet eyes, and some sobbing, but then, after a minute or two, it turns horrible, and it’s like he’s an earthquake, or maybe like that animal inside him is struggling and trying to bite its limb off to get out of a trap.

He tries again because it’s too much, but, when he drags his nails over his cheeks, they never dig in deep enough, and, when he tries to bite his forearm, his teeth never break the skin. He can’t bite through his lip either, and he feels like a failure of a son, as though his mother’s death wasn’t painful enough for him to bear such a small pain.

Easy finds him wrecked with sobs and almost drops the candle: Aubrey can see him fumbling for it, the flame flickering in and out of life. Once Easy has safely put it away, he joins Aubrey on the ground, but he doesn’t touch him just yet.

Aubrey’s not sure how he knows it’s a yet. 

“Aubrey,” Easy says softly, and it’s soft, yes, but it’s sure, too. Something gentle, but something undeniably _there_.

Aubrey doesn’t reply, for once not because he doesn’t have the strength, though he doesn’t, barely getting enough air in past the sobs, but because he’s hoping – like a child, and can’t he be a child a bit longer? – that if he doesn’t reply, Easy will say his name again.

“Aubrey,” Easy repeats, thank God (though Aubrey’s hesitant to give God thanks for anything, these days), moving closer but still not touching. He’s the parenthesis to Aubrey’s anguished exclamation mark, and Aubrey doesn’t know how to ask him to do away with that crescent-moon space between them. “Hey, how can I help? What can I do? What do you need?”

 _Anything_ , Easy said before. _I’ll do anything you ask._

Aubrey finds that his finger is stroking that bitemark at the base of his thumb that Easy’s teeth left there back when everything was a little less complicated.

“I need you to hurt me,” Aubrey says, pressing the tip of his nail there. “Can you hurt me?”

Aubrey thought that Easy was still before, but he realises he was wrong because Easy only goes truly still now.

“Please?”

“No,” Easy says carefully, reaching out to oh-so-slowly push Aubrey’s hair off his forehead. “No, I could never—”

“ _Please_ ,” Aubrey begs. “You said anything, and this is my something, this is my everything because whenever I try, I just can’t, I try to do this” – here he drags his nails over his forearm – “and can’t, and I try to do this” – here he tries to bite into his finger – “and I can’t, and I try to do _this_ ” – here he tries to claw at his face – “and I _can’t_.”

Next to him, Easy’s not even breathing anymore, as though breathing is a choice.

(Which it isn’t, Aubrey knows. What breathing is is some damn good luck.)

“Anything but this,” Easy whispers.

“You said anything,” Aubrey reminds him, and he knows he’s being selfish, he _knows_. “No buts.”

“Aubrey—”

“This hurts worse,” Aubrey manages to choke out through the onset of new tears, pointing in the general direction of his heart, which is funny, because his heart is actually six feet under and counties away. “This hurts worse, and I’m asking you to hurt me differently so that it’ll hurt less.”

“That’s not how it works.”

“But it is how it works, because it’s either this or sleeping through it, and you won’t let me eat sleeping pills either.”

Next to him, Easy curls in on himself until he’s more ‘o’ than a parenthesis, and Aubrey can’t have that because ‘o’ is a closed shape.

 _At least be a ‘c’_ , he begs inside his head. _At least be a ‘c’, even if that means you’ll be facing the other way._

“You said anything,” Aubrey reminds him again. “You _promised_.”

Because promises… Promises are sacred.

Slowly, Aubrey circles Easy’s wrist and drags Easy’s hand up to his face.

“You won’t feel a thing,” he assures him because, well, it’s the whole point. How _Easy_ won’t. “It’s fine.”

He arranges Easy’s hand for him and then presses it to his cheek until he can feel the edges of Easy’s nails against his skin.

“Please.”

Easy does try. Slowly, he moves his fingers up, then down, but he never increases the pressure.

“I can’t,” he whispers, and curls up even more, no longer an ‘o’, more an ‘@’.

“You can,” Aubrey promises, pressing Easy’s hand to his cheek. “It’s all right.”

But Easy’s hand won’t listen: the fingers move until it’s his fingertips on Aubrey’s skin rather than his nails, and his tendons move as he struggles against the pressure of Aubrey’s own hand to keep the touch gentle.

“That’s not what I want,” Aubrey tells him, feeling as though he’s watching the two of them from the ceiling, and why won’t Easy bring him back down? “It’s not what I need.”

“Oh, damn you,” Easy says, with feeling, as though he’s trying to murder the words and not just speak them. “Damn you to hell.”

But he doesn’t mean it, and the pressure increases at last. His nails find Aubrey’s skin and they dig in, and then they dig in deeper, and then they drag and – there’s no blood, but Aubrey can feel that his skin will welt later.

It’s Easy who’s crying now and Aubrey hates himself, he really does. If he was still watching from the ceiling, he’d shake his head at himself and think, _how dare you make him cry_ , but that’s the irony of it all: he’s not watching from the ceiling anymore, and all thanks to this.

*

In the next hour, Aubrey guides Easy’s hand until there are scratches like red crayon lines up his arms, up his face, up his neck. The light never comes back and he watches the candles run as the wax melts.

 _It’s like that_ , he almost tells Easy, almost points to one. _It’s exactly like that._

At one point, Easy’s hand relaxes like he can’t go on, but it’s fine: Aubrey’s skin already stings, and it already feels so much better, and so he doesn’t mind it when Easy’s touch turns soothing instead.

Eventually, they fall asleep like that: Easy’s finger gently tracing one of Aubrey’s veins, and Aubrey’s vein pressing against his skin underneath like the animal welcomes the touch, and Happy New Year.

*

When Aubrey wakes up, the candles are all burnt out, milky dawn morning is sneaking into the room like a thief, and he’s covered with Easy’s Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer jumper.

Easy is sitting on the floor next to him, paints spread all over torn newspaper pages, and he’s painting flowers on Aubrey’s forearm.

“See, isn’t this better?” he says when Aubrey turns his head to watch, but he won’t meet Aubrey’s eyes.

There are many flowers there, but Aubrey recognises a yellow rose – for friendship – first. He remembers thinking something important, something that had little to do with yellow roses, but he can’t remember what it was.

“Isn’t this better?” Easy repeats, the brush almost as gentle on Aubrey’s skin as Easy’s fingers were late at night, but he still won’t meet Aubrey’s eyes.

*

It’s still New Year’s when Aubrey drags a chair to the back of the library.

He has strength for that. He has strength for a few things, now.

He places a stool on the chair, and then he places three thick dictionaries on the stool. Carefully, he climbs up the construction until he’s standing on top of the wobbly tower, face inches away from the fragmented mess of Dora Maar’s own.

To love is to have, and Aubrey doesn’t take the painting off the wall and for himself.

To love is to touch, and Aubrey doesn’t touch it either. His finger hovers an inch away from the canvas, and he doesn’t touch.

His mother’s lessons, all for nothing.

To love is to look, but he’s already looked his fill.

“You’re when chaos makes sense,” Aubrey whispers near Dora Maar’s ear. “So make sense of all this already.”

*

Of course, Aubrey ends up having to wash the flowers off his skin, but even when the colours are gone, the scratches stay.

He doesn’t delude himself. He knows they’ll be gone in a few days, too. It’s all right. He’ll just have to be better by then.

 _I’m aiming for functional_ , he tells his mother in his head. _I won’t miss._

 _(but I_ will _miss you.)_

*

When the others come back, Aubrey doesn’t know what to expect. He asked Easy to call everybody and let them know – actually, Easy offered, and Aubrey agreed – so at least he won’t have to explain, but…

“Where is he?!” someone yells downstairs a minute after the buses pull up outside, and Aubrey wishes he didn’t recognise the voice.

“Where do you think?” he catches Easy say. “I’m not hiding him in the cellar, you—”

“Shut up!” Jerusalem yells before he can get the insult out, and then there are just footsteps.

When she bursts inside, she does it so energetically that the door hits the wall and comes back to smack her in the face. Once she pushes it open again, her nose is red and her eyes are wet.

She doesn’t say anything, just flings herself at him and attempts to hug him to death. Aubrey decides that it’s welcome. Mostly welcome, anyway, and when Regina and Quickly join them, wrapping themselves around whatever Jerusalem’s left unclaimed, the pressure actually helps.

Regina doesn’t say anything either but she pinches the fabric of the Rudolph jumper – which Aubrey ended up wearing even though it’s too small for him – and rubs it between her fingers, close to Aubrey’s wrist.

“I brought a first-aid kit,” Quickly whispers in Aubrey’s ear. He sounds sheepish, like he knows it won’t help, but it warms the leftovers of Aubrey’s heart anyway.

So they all squeeze the life out of him – all save for Kipp.

Because when Kipp climbs up the stairs and joins them in Easy’s room, he takes one look at Easy – who, at the moment, has his back to Aubrey – and pulls him into a hug instead, whispering something in his ear.

Aubrey watches, and then stops watching and closes his eyes, locking himself against the sight until he’s an ‘o’ and then, when it’s not enough, until he’s a ‘.’

*

Peter doesn’t knock, just barges right in the next morning.

“Do you mind?” says Quickly, who spilled his tea down his front from the surprise, and is watching the spreading stain with horror as though he expects to get third-degree burns from cooled water soaking through two layers of jumper.

“I do mind,” Peter snaps. “You three better start controlling that little freak or I’ll go to Longborn!”

Aubrey doesn’t bother pointing out that the headmaster has about as much say in what goes on at Wilgefortis as the Queen does in the country’s politics because even if Peter doesn’t know, he’ll probably learn.

“I’m guessing by ‘little freak’ you mean Easy?” Kipp sighs, stretching languidly like he’s never been more bored in his life. “What did the tornado do now?”

It’s all very first-year. Easy is no longer a tornado, not really.

“He carried our bathroom mirror off to somewhere!” Peter complains as though it’s the gravest offense since Caesar’s assassination. Since the historical assassination, and not their stage one, too.

“Oh-oh, is that why your hair is sticking up so funny?” Kipp says in a wondering tone, tilting his head at Peter.

“I WANT MY MIRROR BACK,” Peter hollers. “If he doesn’t want to stare at his ugly mug, I don’t blame him, but it’s our bathroom, too!”

He storms out and Aubrey thinks this is it, but he comes back less than a minute later for the sole purpose of slamming their door shut.

“You should have checked his blood pressure,” Kipp scolds, throwing a sock at Quickly. “What sort of an aspiring doctor are you?”

Quickly ignores him. “Why would Easy take the mirror down, anyway?”

“Maybe we’re in a horror film and he’s cursed or something,” Kipp says. “I’ll probably die first. The pretty ones always do.”

“I thought the pretty ones survive?”

“You would, Quick,” Kipp says, ruffling his hair. “Anyway, whatever the reason, that’s between Easy and his mirror.”

But he says it like he doesn’t mean it.

Says it like – even though he’s not even looking at him – it’s all Aubrey’s fault.

Later, at breakfast, which they drag Aubrey to, Easy refuses to explain about the mirror and busies himself with toast. Aubrey watches and doesn’t miss how his fingernails are bitten down to the quick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please do not hesitate to tell me whether you completely hate me yet :')
> 
> Thank you for reading <3


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